
Class 

Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 




SELECTED AND CLASSIFIED BY 

BENJAMIN S. CATCHINGS 

OF THE BAR OF NEW YORK CITY 



O'O 



LIBRARY of COK'GK'^Ss] 
I wo Copies Keceivei I 

May 25 lyOG 






Copyright 1907 

by 

Benjamin S. Catching s 



The Nation Pi-ess, New York 



DEDICATION 

Believing that our political organizations 
have become machines which register the 
opinions and interests of the few, and that 
they have drifted far from the principles 
upon which our Commonwealth is founded, 
I have dedicated this compilation to the suc- 
cess of the man who stands most free from 
party reins and strives to do his duty as he 
sees it — who in his ideals follows nearer the 
rugged lines of Jeffersonian Democracythan 
many of its boasted adherents — and to the 
success of these principles and of Charles 
E. Hughes, Governor of New York, this 
work is respectfully dedicated. 

Benjamin S. Catchings. 



CONTENTS 







PAGE 


Introduction 


■z^i'i 


Chapter 


I. 


The Negro and Slavery . . . . i 


11 


2. 


Loyahy and Secession ... 7 




.3- 


The Principles of Thomas Jefferson . 18 


•• 


4- 


Religious Views ..... y6 


it 


5- 


Educational Views ..... 81 


It 


6. 


Summary View of the Rights of British 

America ..... 102 


" V 


'"7. 


Basic Principles of Government . . 106 


it 


8. 


General Views 115 


'• 


9- 


The Constitution . . . . .124 




10. 


The Judiciary . . . . . 137 


<( 


II. 


Foreign Relations ..... 141 


tt 


12. 


The Tariff ...... 149 


tt 


13- 


Theories of Government . . , 155 


it 


14. 


Dangers to the Republic . . . 167 


• t 


vi5- 


Republican Principles . . . -171 


tt 


16. 


The Press ...... 177 


tt 


17- 


Miscellaneous Extracts .... 182 


Appreciation. 


>' of Thomas Jefferson . . . ix — xxii 



J 



* The marginal references locate the 
beginning of the letter from which 
each selection is made or the volume 
and page upon which it can be 
found in "The Writings of Thomas 
Jefferson," published by the Jefferson 
Memorial Association of Washing- 
ton, D. C, which should be found in 
any public library.— [Ed. 



INTRODUCTION 



THOUGHTS which seize the heart and mind of men 
or Nations, which Hft them above the necessary 
strife and sordid struggle of Hfe and sweep them 
headlong into the accomplishment of some great public need ; 
thoughts which fill a few scattered colonies with light and 
life, and spread with telling force into other lands and other 
worlds, driving kings of a thousand years from their 
thrones — these and all like them are the master thoughts of 
our time and race. 

Thomas Jefferson is known as a leader in the thought 
of his age. His principles command the attention of every 
political school, and it is necessary that all should have 
ready access to them. Thanks and recognition are due to 
The Jefferson Memorial Association and all others who 
have aided in gathering together his letters and papers. 
For it was upon these that Mr. Jefferson relied for the 
perpetuation of his ideals. In our days of concentrated 
effort, it is not possible for the average man to wade through 
twenty volumes of detail and routine correspondence. 

To meet this need, the following selections, given in 
his own language, arranged and classified for ready ref- 
erence, and taken impartially from some ten thousand pages 
of documents and letters, are respectfully submitted. It is 
my belief that among them will be found for each reader 
some stirring call to arms, some bugle blast of thought, 
which will lead to renewed exertion, higher ideals, and 
more earnest service. It is my hope that through them 



vu 



INTRODUCTION. 

there will come a deeper and better understanding of a man 
whose entire life was devoted to the disinterested service of 
his people, and who is to-day recognized as the apostle and 
advocate of the rights of the mass of the people as against 
the special interests of the few. And with this introduc- 
tion I submit for your thought and consideration, this 
edition of the 

"Master Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson." 

Benj. S. Catchings. 

New York, May 15, 1907. 



FROM A LETTER TO WILLIAM 
JOHNSON, 1823 

ON OUR part ... we are depending on Truth 
to make itself known . . . my letters (all pre- 
served) will furnish the daily occurrences and views. 
. . . These will command more conviction than anything 
I could have written , after my retirement, no day having 
ever passed without a letter to somebody; written, 
15. 420. too, in the moment and in the warmth and fresh- 
ness of fact and feeling, they will carry internal 
evidence that what they breathe is genuine. . . . 

Thomas Jefferson. 



Master Thoughts 

of 

Thomas Jefferson 

Chapter I. 
The Negro and Slavery 

AS FAR as I can judge, from the experiments which 
have been made to give Hberty to, or rather aban- 
don, persons whose habits have been formed in 
slavery is Hke abandoning children. Many Quakers in Vir- 
ginia seated their slaves on their land as tenants ; they were 
distant from me . . . and ... I cannot 
19. 41. say whether they were to pay rent in money or a 
share of the produce, but I remember the landlord 
was obliged to plan their crops for them, to direct all their 
operations during every season, and according to the 
weather ; but what is more afflicting he was bound to watch 
them daily and almost constantly to make them work, and 
even to whip them. A man's moral sense must be very 
strong if slavery does not make him a thief. He who is 
permitted by law to have no property of his own can with 
difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but 
force. These slaves chose to steal from their neighbors, 
became public nuisances, and in most instances were re- 
duced to slavery again. (Letter to Edward Bancroft, 1788.) 

MR. JOHN ADAMS observed . . . that it was 
of no consequence by what name you called your 
people, whether by that of "freemen" or "slaves" ; 
that in some countries the laboring poor were CALLED 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

freemen, in others they were called slaves ; but that the 
difference as to the state was imaginary only. What 
I. 41. matters it whether a landlord, employing ten labor- 
ers on his farm, gives them annually as much money 
as will buy them the necessaries of life, or gives them 
those necessaries at short hand . . . that the condi- 
tion of the laboring poor in many countries, that of the 
fishermen particularly of the Northern States, is as abject 
as that of slaves. . . . 

THE FIRST establishment (settlement) in Virginia 
which became permanent, was made in 1607. I 
have found no mention of negroes in the colony 
until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves were by 
a Dutch ship; after which the English commenced the 
trade, and continued it until the Revolutionary War. 
I. 58. That suspended, ipso facto, their importation for 
the present, and the business of the war pressing 
constantly on the legislature, this subject was not acted on 
until the year '78, when I brought in a bill to prevent their 
further importation. This passed without opposition, and 
stopped the increase of the evil by importation, leaving to 
further efforts its final eradication. 

THE BILL on the subject of slaves was a mere di- 
gest of the existing laws respecting them, with- 
out an intimation of a plan for a future and gen- 
eral emancipation. It was thought better that this should 
be kept back, and attempted only by way of amendment, 
whenever the bill should be brought in. The princi- 
I. 73. pies of the amendment were, however, agreed on, 
that is to say, the freedom of all born after a cer- 
tain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was 
found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposi- 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tion, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not 
distant when it must bear it and adopt it or worse will fol- 
low. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate-^ 
than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain 
that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same 
government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible- 
lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power 
to direct the process of emancipation and deportation, 
peaceably, and in such slow degree as that the evil will 
wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up 
by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to 
force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect 
held up. We should in vain look for example in the Span- 
ish deportation or depletion of the Moors. This precedent 
would fall far short of our case. (Autobiography, 1821.) 

THE WHOLE commerce between master and slave 
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous pas- 
sions, the most unremitting despotism on the one 
part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children 
see this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is an imitative ani- 
mal. This quality is the germ of all education in 
2. 225. him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning 
to do what he sees others do. If a parent could 
find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for 
restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, 
it should always be a sufificient one that his child is present. 
But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the 
child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the 
same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives aloose to the 
worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily ex- 
ercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious 
peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. 
And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, 
who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on 
the rights of the other, transforms these into despots, and 
these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, 
and the amor patriae of the other. . . . With the 
morals of the people their industry is destroyed. For in a 
warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make 
another labor for him. This is so true, that of the pro- 
prietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever 
seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought 
secure when we have removed their very basis, a convic- 
tion in the minds of the people that these liberties are of 
the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with 
his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I re- 
flect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep for- 
ever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means, 
only a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of 
situation is among possible events ; that it may become prob- 
able by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no 
attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest 
. . . the spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave 
rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I 
hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total 
emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of 
events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by 
their extirpation. (Notes on Virginia, 1781.) 



UNHAPPILY it is a case for which both parties re- 
quire long and difficult preparation. The mind of 
the master is to be apprised by reflection, and 
strengthened by the energies of conscience, against the ob- 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

stacks of self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of 
others, that of the slave is to be prepared by in- 
14. 296. struction and habit for self-government, and for 
the honest pursuits of industry and social duty. 
Both of these courses of preparation take time, and the 
former must precede the latter . . . but it will yield 
in time to temperate and steady pursuit, to the enlarge- 
ment of the human mind and the advancement of science. 
We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power 
of a superior agent. Our efforts are in His hand, and di- 
rected by it ; and He will give them their effect in His own 
time. Where the disease is most deeply seated there it will 
be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was 
merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the Southern it 
is incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, 
patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it 
may finally be effected and its progress hastened will be 
(my) last and fondest prayer. (To David Barrow, 1815.) 

I CONGRATULATE you, fellow citizens, on the ap- 
proach of the period at which you may interpose your 
authority constitutionally, to withdraw the citizens of 
the United States from all further participation in those 
violations of human rights which have been so long con- 
tinued upon the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, 
3. 421 and which the morality, the reputation, and the 
best interests of our country have long been eager 
to proscribe. 

HERE (in Virginia) crime is scarcely heard of ... . 
Our only blot is becoming less offensive by the 
great improvement in the condition and civiliza- 
tion of that race (negro), who can now be more ad- 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

vantageously compared, in their situation, with that of the 
laborers of Europe. Still it is a hideous blot, as 
15. 468. well from the . . . peculiarities of the race, 
as that, with them, physical compulsion to action 
must be substituted for the moral necessity which constrains 
the free laborers to work equally hard. We feel and de- 
plore it morally and politically, and we look without entire 
despair to some redeeming means not yet specifically fore- 
seen . . . their emigration to the westward lightens the 
difficulty by dividing it, and renders it more practicable on 
the whole. (To William Short, 1823.) 

WHAT a stupendous, what an incomprehensible 
machine is man ! who can endure toil, famine, 
stripes, imprisonment and death itself, in vindi- 
cation of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf to 
all those motives whose power supported him through his 

trial, and inflict on his fellow-man a bondage, one 
17. 103. hour of which is fraught with more misery than 

ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. 
But we must await, with patience, the workings of an over- 
ruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the de- 
liverance of these, our suflfering brethren. When the meas- 
ure of their tears shall be full, when their groans shall have 
involved Heaven itself in darkness, doubtless, a God of jus- 
tice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light 
and liberality among their oppressors, or, at length, by his 
exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things 
of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of 
a blind fatality. (Monsieur De Meusnier, 1786.) 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

Chapter II 
Loyalty and Secession 

THE REV. MR. COFFIN . . . soliciting dona- 
tions for a college ... in Tennessee, tells me 
. . . he wrote a paper recommendatory of the 
enterprise, which he meant to get signed by . . . per- 
sons in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. 
Adams to put his name, he being then President. 
I. 441. . . . Mr. Adams, after reading the paper and 
considering, said "he saw no possibility of con- 
tinuing the Union of the States ; that their dissolution must 
necessarily take place; that he therefore saw no propriety 
in recommending to New England men to promote a literary 
institution in the South ; that it was in fact giving strength 
to those who were to be their enemies; and therefore he 
would have nothing to do with it." (December 13, 1803.) 

I SEE, with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with 
which the federal branch of our government is advanc- 
ing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to 
the States and the consolidation in itself, of all powers, for- 
eign and domestic ; and that, too, by constructions which, if 
legitimate leave no limits to their power. . . . 
16. 146. Under the authority to build post roads, they 
claim that of cutting down mountains for the con- 
struction of roads, of digging canals . . . and what is 
our resource for the preservation of the Constitution? 
Reason and argument? You might as well argue with the 
marble columns encircling them . . . Are we then, to 
stand to our arms, with the hot-headed Georgian? No. 
That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until 
much longer and greater sufferings. If every infraction of 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

a compact of so many parties is to be resisted at once, as 
a dissolution of it, none can ever be formed which would 
last one year. We must have patience and longer endur- 
ance then with our brethren when under delusion; give 
them time for reflection and experience of consequences; 
keep ourselves in a situation to profit by the chapter of acci- 
dents; and separate from our companions only when the 
sole alternatives left are the dissolution of our Union 
with them, or submission to a government without limita- 
tion of powers. Between these two evils, when we must 
make our choice, there can be no hesitation. But in the 
meantime the States should be watchful to note every ma- 
terial usurpation of their rights ; to denounce them as they 
occur in the most peremptory terms ; to protest against 
them as wrongs to which our present consideration shall 
be considered, not as acknowledgment or precedent of right, 
but as a temporary yielding to a lesser evil, until their ac- 
cumulation shall overweigh that of separation. I would go 
still further, and give to the federal member, by a regular 
amendment of the Constitution, a right to make roads and 
canals of intercommunication between the States, providing 
sufficiently against corrupt practices in Congress (log roll- 
ing, etc.), by declaring that the federal proportion of each 
State of the moneys so employed shall be in works within 
the State, or elsewhere with its consent. . . . This is 
the course which I think safest and best as yet. . . . 
Consolidation . . . becomes . . . the next book of 
their history . . . they now look to a single and splendid 
government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institu- 
tions, and moneyed corporations under the guise and cloak 
of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce, and 
navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered plowman 
and beggared yeomanry. (To William Giles, 1825.) 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

IT HAS often been said that the decisions of Congress 
are impotent because the Confederation provides no 
compulsory power. But when two or more nations 
enter into a compact, it is not usual for them to say what 
shall be done to the party who infringes it. Decency for- 
bids this, and it is as unnecessary as indecent, be- 
17. 121. cause the right of compulsion naturally results to 
the party injured by the breach. When any one 
State in the American Union refuses obedience to the Con- 
federation by which they have bound themselves, the rest 
have a natural right to compel them to obedience. Con- 
gress would probably exercise long patience before they 
would recur to force ; but if the case ultimately required it, 
they would use that recurrence. Should this case ever arise, 
they will probably coerce by a naval force, as being more 
easy, less dangerous to liberty, and less likely to produce 
much bloodshed. It has been said that our governments, 
both federal and particular, want energy; that it is difficult 
to restrain both individuals and States from committing 
wrongs. This is • true, and is an inconvenience. On the 
other hand, that energy which absolute governments derive 
from an armed force, which is the effect of the bayonet 
constantly held at the breast of every citizen, and which re- 
sembles very much the stillness of the grave, must be ad- 
mitted also to have its inconveniences. We weigh the two 
together, and like best to submit to the former. (1786.) 



DANGERS . . . might be apprehended more 
reasonably from this perfect and distinct organi- 
zation, civil and military, of the States; to wit, 
that certain States from local and occasional discontents 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

might attempt to secede from the Union. This is certainly- 
possible ; and would be befriended by this regular 
13. 21. organization. But it is not probable that local dis- 
contents can spread to such an extent as to be able 
to face the sound parts of so extensive a Union ; and if they 
should reach a majority, they would then become the regu- 
lar government, acquire the ascendency in Congress, and be 
able to redress their own grievances by laws peaceably and 
constitutionally passed. 

FORTY years of almost constant absence from the 
State (Virginia) have made me a stranger in it, 
have left me a solitary tree, from around which the 
axe of time has felled all the companions of its youth and 
growth. . . . The last hope of human liberty in this 

world rests on us. We ought for so dear a State 
13. 27. to sacrifice every attachment and every enmity. 

Leave the President free to choose his own coadju- 
tors, to pursue his own measures, and support him and 
them, even if we think we are wiser than they, honester 
than they are, or possessing more enlarged information of 
the state of things. If we move in mass, be it ever so 
circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into 
squads, every one pursuing the path he thinks most direct, 
we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely 
hold us in check. I repeat again that we ought not to 
schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone 
can justify that. If we find our government in all its 
branches rushing headlong, like our predecessors, into the 
arms of monarchy, if we find them violating our dearest 
rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the free- 
dom of opinion, civil, or religious, or opening on our peace 
of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see 
them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other 



10 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are 
to be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the 
nation to its tents. . . . But while our functionaries 
are wise and honest and vigilant, let us move compactly 
under their guidance, and we have nothing to fear. Things 
may here and there go a little wrong. It is not in their 
power to prevent it. But all will be right in the end, though 
not perhaps by the shortest means. (Col. Duane, 1811.) 



WHAT does this English faction with you (in 
Massachusetts) mean? Their newspapers say, 
rebellion, and that they will not remain united 
with us unless we will permit them to govern the majority. 
If this be their purpose, their anti-republican spirit, it ought 
to be met at once. But a government like ours 
13. 162. should be slow in believing this, should put forth 
its whole might when necessary to suppress it, and 
promptly return to the paths of reconciliation. (1812.) 



THE CEMENT of this Union is in the heart blood of 
every American. I do not believe there is on earth 
a government established on so immovable a basis. 
Let them, in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise 
the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise in 
mass, and do justice themselves on their own in- 
14. 252. cendiaries. 



I 



CAN scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than 
the breaking of the Union into two or more parts. 
... 8. 346. 



II 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE PURSE of the people is the real seat of sensi- 
biHty. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they 
will then listen to truths which could not excite 
them through any other organ, 
lo. 59. 



ALTHOUGH I had laid down as a law to myself, 
never to write, talk, or even think of politics, to 
know nothing of public affairs, and therefore had 
ceased to read the newspapers, yet the Missouri question 
aroused and filled me with alarm. The old schism of fed- 
eral and republican threatened nothing, because it 
15. 247. existed in every State, and united them together 
by the fraternism of party. But the coincidence of 
a marked principle, moral and political, with a geographi- 
cal line, once conceived, I feared would never more be 
obliterated from the mind; that it would be recurring on 
every occasion and renewing irritations, until it would 
kindle such mutual and mortal hatred, as to render sepa- 
ration preferable to discord. I have been among the most 
sanguine in believing that our Union would be of long dura- 
tion. I now doubt it much, and see the event at no great 
distance, and the direct consequence of this question; 
. . . My only comfort and confidence is, that I shall not 
live to see this; and I envy not the present generation the 
glory of throwing away the fruits of their Fathers' sacri- 
fices of life and fortune, and of rendering desperate the ex- 
periment which was to decide ultimately the question 
whether man is capable of self-government. This treason 
against human hope will signalize their epoch in future his- 
tory, as the counterpart of the medal of their predecessors. 
♦Letter to William Short, 1820. 



12 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THIS momentous question (Missouri Compromise), 
like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me 
with terror. ... I considered it at once as the 
knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. 
But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographi- 
cal line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral 
15. 249. and political, once conceived and held up to the 
angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, 
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. 
. . . I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not a 
man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to 
relieve us of this heavy reproach, in any practical way. The 
cession of that kind of property (slaves), for so it is mis- 
named, is a bagatelle, which would not cost me a second 
thought, if in that way a general emancipation and ex- 
patriation could be efifected; and gradually and with due 
sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf 
by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him 
go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the 
other. ... I regret that I am now to die in the belief 
that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 
1776, to acquire self-government and happiness of their 
country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy 
passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to 
be that I live not to weep over it. 

If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings 
they will throw away, against an abstract principle more 
likely to be effected by Union than without, they would 
pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on 
themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. 
. . . To yourself as the faithful advocate of the Union I 
tender the offering of my esteem and respect. 

*Letter to John Holmes, 1820. 

13 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

NOR IS our side of the water entirely untroubled, 
the boisterous sea of liberty is never without a 
wave. A hideous evil, the magnitude of which is 
seen, and at a distance only, by the one party, and more 
sorely felt and sincerely deplored by the other, from the 
difficulty of the cure, divides us at this moment 
15. 283. too angrily. The attempt by one party to pro- 
hibit willing States from sharing the evil, is thought 
by the other to render desperate by accumulation the hope 
of its final eradication. If a little time, however, is given 
to both parties to cool, and to dispel their visionary fears, 
they will see that concurring in sentiment as to the evil, 
moral and political, the duty and interest of both is to con- 
cur also in divining a practical process of cure. Should 
time not be given, and the schism be pushed to separation, 
it will be for a short time only ; two or three years' trial 
will bring them back, like quarrelling lovers, to renewed 
embraces and increased affections. The experiment of 
separation would soon prove to both that they had mutually 
miscalculated their best interests. And even were the parties 
in Congress to secede in a passion, the soberer people would 
call a convention and cement again the severance attempted 
by the insanity of their functionaries. With this consoling 
view my greatest grief would be for the fatal effect of 
such an event on the hopes and happiness of the world. We 
exist and are quoted as standing proofs that a government 
so modelled as to rest continually upon the will of the whole 
society is a practicable government. Were we to break to 
pieces, it would dampen the hopes and the efforts of the 
good, and give triumph to those of the bad through the 
whole enslaved world. As members therefore of the uni- 
versal society of mankind, and standing in high and re- 
sponsible relation with them, it is our sacred duty to sup- 
press passion among ourselves, and not to blast the con- 



14 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

fidence we have inspired of proof that a government of 
reason is better than one of force. (William Rush, 1820.) 



IT IS not a moral question, but one merely of power. 
Its object is to raise a geographical principle for the 
choice of President, and the noise will be kept up till 
that is effected. 

All know that permitting the slaves of the South to 
spread into the West will not add one being to that un- 
fortunate condition, that it will increase the happi- 
15. 301. ness of those existing, and by spreading them over 
a larger surface will dilute the evil everywhere, 
and facilitate the means of finally getting rid of it, an event 
more anxiously wished by those on whom it presses than 
by the noisy pretenders to exclusive humanity. In the 
meantime it is a ladder for rivals climbing to power. 



ALL, I fear, do not see the speck in our horizon 
which is to burst on us as a tornado sooner or 
later. The line of division lately marked out be- 
tween different portions of our confederacy is such as will 
never, I fear, be obliterated. 

I5-3I5- 



BY ALL, I trust, the Union of these States will ever 
be considered as the Palladium of their safety, 
their prosperity and glory, and all attempts to 
sever it will be frowned on with reprobation and abhor- 



15 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

rence. And I have equal confidence that all moved by the 
sacred principles of liberty and patriotism will pre- 
i6. 341. pare themselves for any crisis we may be able to 
meet, and be ready to cooperate with each other, 
and with the constituted authorities, in resisting and repell- 
ing the aggressions of foreign nations. 

BE THIS as it may, in every free and deliberating 
society, there must from the nature of man be 
opposite parties and violent dissensions and dis- 
cords ; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over 
the other for a longer or shorter term. Perhaps this party 

division is necessary to induce each to watch and 
18. 207. relate to the people the proceedings of the other. 

But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, 
the other is to resort to the scission of the Union no Federal 
Government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the pres- 
ent rule of Massachusetts and Connecticut we break the 
Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the New England 
States cut off, will our natures be changed? Are we not 
men still to the south of that, and with all the passions of 
men? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania and a Vir- 
ginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the pub- 
lic mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What 
a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by 
eternally threatening the other that, unless they do so and 
so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce 
our Union to Virginia and North Carolina, immediately the 
conflict will be established between the representatives of 
these two States, and they will end by breaking into their 
simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men 
that will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never 
yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down 
to a town meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have 

16 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New Eng- 
land associates for that purpose than to see our bickerings 
transferred to others. ... A little patience and we 
shall see the reign of witches over, their spells dissolve, and 
the people, recovering their true sight, restore their govern- 
ment to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime 
we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors 
of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. 
But who could say what would be the evils of a scission, and 
when and where they would end? Better keep together as 
we are, haul off from Europe as soon as we can, and from 
all attachments to any portions of it. And if we feel their 
power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the 
happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs 
sometimes against us at home we must have patience until 
luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of win- 
ning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game 
where principles are the stake. (To John Taylor, 1798.) 

I AM perfectly content ... to meet all hazards 
and trials with my fellow citizens. If we keep together 
we shall be safe, and when error is so apparent as to 
become visible to the majority, they will correct it, and 
what we suffer during the error must be carried to ac- 
count with the losses by tempests, earthquakes, etc. 
18. 291. 



17 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

Chapter III 
The Principles of Thomas Jefferson 

I AM as happy nowhere else, and in no other society, and 
all my wishes end, where I hope my days will end, at 
Monticello. Too many scenes of happiness mingle 
themselves with all the recollections of my native woods 
and fields, to suffer them to be supplanted in my affection 

by any other. 
6. 263 

WERE parties here divided merely by a greedi- 
ness for office as in England, to take a part 
with either would be unworthy of a reason- 
able or moral man. But where the principle of difference 
is as pronounced as between the Republicans and the mono- 
crats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take 
9. 317. a firm and decided part, and as immoral to pursue 
a middle line, as between the parties of honest men 
and rogues, into which every country is divided. (Letter 
to William Giles, 1795.) 

THANKS be to God, the tiger (Napoleon Bona- 
parte) who revelled so long in the blood and spoils 
of Europe is at length, like another Prometheus, 
chained to his rock, where the vulture of remorse for his 
crimes will be preying on his vitals and in like manner with- 
out consuming them. Having been like him in- 
19. 256. trusted with the happiness of my country, I feel 
the blessing of resembling him in no other point. 
I have not caused the death of five or ten millions of human 
beings, the devastation of other countries, the depopulation 
of my own, the exhaustion of all its resources, the destruc- 

18 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tion of its liberties, nor its foreign subjugation. All this 
he has done to render more illustrious the atrocities perpe- 
trated for illustrating himself and his family with plundered 
diadems and sceptres. On the contrary, I have the conso- 
lation to reflect that during the period of my administra- 
tion not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was 
shed by the sword of war or of the law, and that after 
cherishing for eight years their peace and prosperity I laid 
down their trust of my own accord, and in the midst of 
their blessings and importunities to continue in it. But be- 
ginning to be sensible of the effect of age, I feared its in- 
firmities might injure their interests, and believed the ex- 
ample would be salutary against inveteration in office, and 
I now enjoy in retirement the comfort of their good will, 
and of a conscience calm and without reproach. (To 
Count Duquain, 1818.) 



MY greatest of all amusements (is) reading. Dr. 
Franklin used to say that when he was young 
and had time to read he had not books ; and now, 
v/hen he has become old and has books, he has no time. 
Perhaps it is that when habit has strengthened our sense of 
duties, they leave us no time for other things; 
19. 194. but when young we neglect them and this gives 
us time for anything. 



YOU know our course of life. To place our friends 
at ease we show them that we are so ourselves, 
by pursuing the necessary vocations of the day and 
enjoying their company at the usual hours of society. 
19. 209. 



19 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I HAVE come to a resolution myself, as I hope every 
good citizen will, never again to purchase any arti- 
cle of foreign manufacture which can be had of Ameri- 
can make, be the difference of price what it may. 
19. 223. 



S 



ENSIBILITY of mind is indeed the parent of every 
virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too. 
19. 46. 



To Hon. Jas. Monroe. 1800. General. 

I NEVER doubted the propriety of our adopting as a 
system that of pomp and fulsome attentions by our 
citizens to their functionaries. I am decided, against 
it, as it makes the citizen in his own eye exalting his func- 
tionary and creating a distance between the two, which does 
not tend to aid the morals of either. I think it is 
19. 119. a practice which we ought to destroy and must 
destroy, and therefore must not adopt as a general 
thing even for a short time. 



I 



T is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist 
in it. 
19. 149. 



OUR body was litde numerous, but very contentious. 
Day after day was wasted on the most unimportant 
questions. A member, one of those afflicted with 
the morbid rage of debate, of an ardent mind, prompt im- 
agination, and copious flow of words, who heard with im- 
patience any logic which was not his own, sitting 
I. 86. near me on some occasion of a trifling but wordy 
debate, asked me how I could sit in silence, hear- 



20 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ing so much false reasoning, which a word should refute? 
I observed to him that to refute indeed was easy, but to 
silence was impossible; that in measures brought forward 
by myself, I took the laboring oar, as was incumbent upon 
me ; but that in general, I was willing to listen ; that if every 
sound argument or objection (was suggested) by some one 
or other of the numerous debaters, it was enough ; if not, I 
thought it sufficient to suggest the omission, without going 
into a repetition of what had been already said by others : 
that this was a waste and abuse of the time and patience of 
the house, which could not be justified. And I believe that 
if the members of deliberative bodies were to observe this 
course generally, they would do in a day what takes them 
a week ; and it is really more questionable than may at first 
be thought, whether Bonaparte's dumb legislature, which 
said nothing, and did much, may not be preferable to one 
which talks much, and does nothing. 

I served with General Washington in the legislature 
of Virginia before the Revolution, and during it with Dr. 
Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak 
more than ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main 
point, which was to decide the question. They laid their 
shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones 
would follow of themselves. If the present Congress errs 
in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to 
which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose 
trade is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by 
the hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do 
business together is not to be expected. 

THE Count de Vergennes had the reputation, with 
the diplomatic corps, of being slippery and wary 
in his diplomatic intercourse; and so he might be 
with those whom he knew to be slippery and double-faced 

21 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

themselves. As he saw that I had no indirect views, prac- 
ticed no subtleties, meddled in no intrigues, pur- 

I. 96. sued no concealed object, I found him as frank, 
honorable, as easy of access to reason, as any man 

with whom I have ever done business. . . . 

MY wish was to see both houses of Congress cleansed 
of all persons interested in the bank or pub- 
lic stocks ; and that a pure legislature being given 
us, I should always be ready to acquiesce under their de- 
terminations, even if contrary to my own opinions; for I 
subscribe to the principle, that the will of the ma- 
I. 332. jority, honestly expressed, should give law. ; 

IN EVERY event, I would rather construe (the Consti- 
tution) so narrowly as to oblige the Nation to amend, 
and thus declare what powers they would agree to 
yield, than too broadly, and, indeed, so broadly as to enable 
the Executive and Senate to do things the Con- 
I. 408. stitution forbids. 

I WAS against writing letters to the Judiciary officers. 
I thought them independent of the Executive, not 
subject to its coercion, and therefore not obliged to 
attend to its admonitions. 
I- 399- 

I HAD never interfered directly or indirectly with my 
friends or any others to influence the election for 
. . . myself; that I considered it as my duty to be 
merely passive. ... In the election now coming on I 
was observing the same conduct, held no councils 
with anybody respecting it, nor suffered any one 
I. 445. to speak to me on the subject, believing it my duty 
to leave myself to the free discussion of the pub- 
lic. . . . 

22 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I NEVER had done a single act, or been concerned in 
any transaction, which I feared to have fully laid 
open, or which could do me any hurt, if truly stated; 
. . . I had never done a single thing with a view to my 
personal interest, or that of any friend, or with any other 
view than that of the greatest public good; that 
I. 450. therefore, no threat or fear on that head could 
ever be a motive of action with me. Coming out 
of the Senate chamber one day, I found Gouverneur Mor- 
ris on the steps. He stopped me . . . and went on 
to observe that the reasons why the minority of States 
was so opposed to my being elected, were, that they ap- 
prehended that (i) I would turn all Federalists out of of- 
fice; (2) put down the navy; (3) wipe off the public debt. 
That I need only declare, or to authorize my friends to 
declare, that I would not take these steps, and instantly 
the event of the election would be fixed. I told him that 
I should leave the World to judge of the course I meant 
to pursue by that which I had pursued hitherto, believing 
it my duty to be passive and silent during the present 
scene ; that I should certainly make no terms ; should never 
go into the office of President by capitulation, nor with my 
hands tied by any conditions which should liinder me from 
pursuing the measures which I should deem for the public 
good. (The vote stood 7^ to 7^, and one vote would have 
decided the election.) . . . Certain I am that neither he 
nor any other Republican ever uttered the most distant 
hint to me about submitting to any conditions, or giving 
any assurances to anybody, and still more certainly, was 
neither he nor any other person ever authorized by me to 
say what I would or would not do. . . . 



23 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

IGNORANCE is preferable to error; and he is less re- 
mote from truth who believes nothing, than he who 
believes what is wrong. 
2. 43- 

IN SHORT we are likely to preserve the liberty we have 
obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But 
we shall preserve it; and our mass of weight and 
wealth on the good side is so great as to leave no danger 
that force will ever be attempted against us. 

9- 335- 

WE have an immensity of land courting the in- 
dustry of the husbandman. Is it best then 
for all our citizens to be employed in its im- 
provement, or that one-half should be called ofif from that 
to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? 

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen peo- 
2. 229. pie of God, if he ever had a chosen people, whose 

breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for sub- 
stantial and genuine virtue. . . . Corruption of morals 
in the mass of cultivators is a phenomenon of which no 
age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark 
set on those who, not looking up to heaven, to their own 
soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their sub- 
sistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of cus- 
tomers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suf- 
focates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the 
designs of ambition. 

This, the natural progress and consequence of the 
arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental 
circumstances; but, generally speaking, the proportion 



24 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears 
in any State to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of 
its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough 
barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. 
While we have land to labor then, let us never wish to see 
our citizens occupied at a work bench, or twirling a distaff. 
Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry; but 
for the general operations of manufacture, let our work- 
shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions 
and materials to workmen there than bring them to the pro- 
visions and materials, and with them their manners and 
principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities 
across the Atlantic will be made up (in) happiness and per- 
manence of government. The mobs of great cities add 
just so much to the support of pure government as sores do 
to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and 
spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A 
degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart 
of its laws and constitution. 

I REPEAT it again, cultivators of the earth are the most 
virtuous and independent citizens . . . the actual 
habits of our countrymen attach them to commerce. 
They will exercise it for themselves. Wars then must 
sometimes be our lot ; and all the wise can do will be to 
avoid that half of them which would be produced 
2. 241. by our own follies, and our own acts of injustice; 
and to make for the other half the best prepara- 
tions we can. Of what nature should these be? A land 
army would be useless for offence, and not the best nor 
safest instrument of defence. For either of these purposes 
the sea is the field on which we should meet an European 
enemy. On that element it is necessary that we should 
possess some power. To aim at such a navy as the greater 

25 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

European nations possess would be a foolish and wicked 
waste of the energies of our countrymen. It would be to 
pull on our own heads that load of military expense which 
makes the European laborer go supperless to bed, and 
moistens his bread with the sweat of his brow. It will be 
enough if we enable ourselves to prevent insults from those 
nations of Europe which are weak on the sea, because 
circumstances exist which render even the strong ones weak 
as to us. Providence has placed their richest and most 
defenceless possessions at our door; has obliged their most 
precious commerce to pass, as it were, in review before us. 
To protect this, or to assail, a small part only of their naval 
force will ever be risked across the Atlantic. The dangers 
to which the elements expose them here are too well known, 
and the greater dangers to which they would be exposed 
at home, were any calamity to involve their whole fleet. 
They can attack us by detachment only; and it will suffice 
to make ourselves equal to what they may detach. . . . 
A small naval force then is sufficient for us, and a small 
one is necessary. What this should be I will not under- 
take to say. I will only say, it should be by no means so 
great as we are able to make it. 

OUR INTEREST will be to throw open the doors of 
commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giv- 
ing perfect freedom to all persons for the vent of 
whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and ask- 
ing the same in theirs. Never was so much false arithme- 
tic employed on any subject as that which has been 
2. 240 employed to persuade nations that it is their in- 
terest to go to war. Were the money which it 
has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town, or 
a little territory, the right to cut wood here, or to catch fish 
there, expended in improving what they already possess, in 

26 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the 
arts, and finding employment for their idle poor, it would 
render them much stronger, much wealthier, and happier. 
And this I hope will be our wisdom. 

DURING the contest of opinion through which we 
have passed, the animation of discussion and of 
exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which 
might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to 
think and to write what they think; but this being now 

decided by the voice of the nation, announced ac- 
3. 318. cording to the rules of the Constitution, all will, 

of course, arrange themselves under the will of the 
law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. 
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though 
the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, 
to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority pos- 
sess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and 
to violate which would be oppression. Let us, then, fel- 
low-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us 
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection 
without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary 
things. And let us reflect that having banished from our 
land that religious intolerance under which mankind so 
long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we 
countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, 
and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During 
the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the 
agonizing spasms of infuriated men, seeking through blood 
and slaughter their long lost liberty, it was not wonderful 
that the agitation of the billows should reach even this 
distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt 
and feared by some and less by others ; that this shouiii 
divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every differ- 



27 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ence of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have 
called by different names brethren of the same principle. 
We are all republicans — we are all federalists. If there 
be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union 
or to change its republican form, let them stand undis- 
turbed as monuments of the safety with which error of 
opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to com- 
bat it. I know indeed that some honest men fear that a 
republican government cannot be strong enough. But would 
ihe honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, 
abandon a government which has so far kept us free and 
firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this govern- 
ment, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy 
to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the con- 
trary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it is 
the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would 
fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions 
of the public order as his own personal concern. Some- 
times it is said that man cannot be trusted with the gov- 
ernment of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the 
government of others? Or have we found angels in the 
forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this 
question. 

I FEAR not that any motives of interest may lead me 
astray ; I am sensible of no passion which could 
seduce me knowingly from the path of justice; but 
the weakness of human nature, and the limits of my own 
understanding w'll produce errors of judgment sometimes 
injurious to your interests. I shall need, there- 
3. 383. fore, all the indulgence I have heretofore ex- 
perienced — the want of it will certainly not lessen 
with the increasing years. I shall need, too, the favor of 
that being, in whose hands we are, who led our Fathers, 

28 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

as Israel of old, from their native land, and planted them 
in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts 
of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence, 
• and our riper years with His wisdom and power ; and to 
whose goodness I ask you to join me in supplications, that 
He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their 
councils, and prosper their measures, that whatsoever they 
do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the 
peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations. 

I PERCEIVE by your letter you are not unapprised 
that your services to your country have not made 
due impression on every mind. That you have 
enemies, you must not doubt, when you reflect that you 
have made yourself eminent. If you meant to escape malice 
you should have confined yourself within the 
4. 201. sleepy line of regular duty. When you trans- 
gressed this, and enterprised deeds which will hand 
down your name with honor to future times, you made 
yourself a mark for envy and malice to shoot at. Of these 
there is enough, both in and out of office. I was not a 
little surprised to find one person hostile to you . . . 
that you may long continue a fit object for his enmity, and 
for that of every person of his complexion in the state, 
which I know can only be by your continuing to do good 
to your country, and to acquire honor to yourself, is the 
earnest prayer of . . . Your friend. . . . 

/ .... In a virtuous government, and more es- 
pecially in times like these, public offices are what they 
should be, burthens to those appointed to them, which it 
would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring with 
them intense labor and great private loss. 4. 297. 



29 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

If pride of character be of worth at any time, it is when 
it disarms the efforts of malice. 4. 364. 

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than 
money. 4. 23. 

I HAVE printed and reserved just copies enough (Notes 
on Virginia) to be able to give one to every young 
man at the college. It is to them I look, to the ris- 
ing generation, and not to the one now in power, for these 
great reformations. ., 
5- 4- 

THE KNOWN bias of the human mind from mo- 
tives of interest should lessen the confidence of 
each party in the justice of their reasoning; . . . 
5- 322. 

EVERY rational citizen must wish to see an effective 
instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it 
on any other element than the water. A naval 
force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion blood- 
shed, a land force would do both. 
5. 386. 

WERE I to select any passages as giving me par- 
ticular satisfaction, it would be those wherein 
you prove to the United States that they will 
be more virtuous, more free, and more happy, employed in 
agriculture, than as carriers or manufacturers. It is a 
truth and a precious one for them, if they could 
5. 402. be persuaded of it. 



30 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE PHILADELPHIA Bank was incorporated by 
Congress. This is perhaps the only instance of 
their having done that which they had no power 
to do. Necessity obhged them to give this institution the 
appearance of their countenance, because in that moment 
they were without any other resource for money. 
5- 420. 

PERFECTION in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is 
neither required nor expected in these agents (pub- 
lic servants). It belongs not to man. 
18. 129. The wise know too well their weakness to assume 
infallibility ; and he who knows most, knows best 
how little he knows. 

This is not the spirit of our law. It expects not im- 
possibilities. ... It has consecrated the principle that 
its servants are not responsible for honest errors of judg- 
ment. . . . He who has done his duty honestly, and ac- 
cording to his best skill and judgment, stands acquitted be- 
fore God and man. y 

YOU SAY that I have been dished up to you as an 
anti-federalist, and ask me if it be just . . . 
since you ask it I will tell you. ... I am not 
a federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of 
my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in 
religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything 
7. 299. else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. 
Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free 
moral agent. If I could not go to heaven with but a party, 
I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the 
party of federalists. But I am much farther from that of 
the anti-federalists. I approved from the first moment 



31 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of the great mass of what is in the new Constitution; the 
consoHdation of the government ; the organization into Ex- 
ecutive, legislative, and judiciary . . , what I disap- 
proved from the first moment also was the want of a bill 
of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as 
the executive branches of the government, that is to say, 
to secure freedom in religion, freedom of the press, free- 
dom from monopolies, freedom from unlawful imprison- 
ment, freedom from a permanent military, a trial by jury, in 
all cases determinable by the laws of the land. . . . 
These, my dear friend, are my sentiments, by which you 
will see I was right in saying that I am neither federalist 
nor anti-federalist ; that I am of neither party, nor yet a 
trimmer between parties. These, my opinions, I wrote 
within a few hours after I had read the Constitution, to one 
or two friends in America. I had not then read one single 
word printed on the subject. 

I never had an opinion in politics or religion which I 
was afraid to own. A costive reserve on these subjects 
might have procured me more esteem from some people, but 
less from myself. My great wish is to go on in a strict 
but silent performance of my duty ; to avoid attracting 
notice, and to keep my name out of newspapers, because 
I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, 
is more acute than the pleasure of much praise. The at- 
taching circumstance of my present office is that I can do 
its duties unseen by those for whom they are done. 

THE OPERATIONS which have taken place in 
America lately fill me with pleasure. In the first 
place, they realize the confidence I had, that when- 
ever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the 



32 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

people will interpose and set them to rights. The example 
of changing a constitution, by assembling the wise 

7. 322. men of the state, instead of assembling armies, 
will be worth as much to the world as the former 

examples we had given them. The Constitution, too, which 

was the result of our deliberations, is unquestionably the 

wisest ever yet presented to men. . . . 

I HAVE not hesitated to press on him (Lafayette) to 
burn his instructions, and follow his conscience as 
the only sure clue, which will eternally guide a man 
clear of all doubts and inconsistencies. . . . 
7' 350. 

WE THINK, in America, that it is necessary to 
introduce the people into every department of 
government, as far as they are capable of 
exercising it; and that this is the only way to insure a long 
continued and honest administration of its powers. . . . 

In the form of juries, therefore, they determine 
7. 422. all matters of fact, leaving to the judges to decide 

the question of law resulting from those facts. 
But we all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit 
de corps; that being known, they are liable to be tempted 
by bribery ; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, 
by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legis- 
lative power ; that it is better to leave a cause to cross and 
pile than to a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion 
of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right 
than cross and pile do. It is in the power, therefore, of 
the juries, if they think permanent judges are under any 
bias whatever, in any cause, to take on themselves to judge 
the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this 
power, but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and 



33 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF T HO WAS JEFFERSON 

by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest 
bulwarks of English liberty. Were I called upon to decide 
whether the people had best be omitted in the legislative or 
judiciary department, I would say it is better to leave them 
out of the legislative. The execution of the laws is more 
important than the making of them. However it is best 
to have the people in all three departments, where that is 
possible. 



I 



T IS not for an individual to choose his post. 
8. I. 



YOU ARE too well informed a politician, too good 
a judge of men, not to know that the ground of 
liberty is to be gained by inches, that we must be 
contented to secure what we can get from time to time, and 
eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes 
time to persuade men to do even what is for their 
8. 3. own good. 

CONVINCED that the republican is the only form 
for government which is not eternally at open or 
secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers 
and efforts shall be cordially to the support of that we 
have so happily established. It is indeed an animating 
thought, that while we are securing the rights of 
8. 7. ourselves and our posterity, we are pointing out 
the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, 
to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their 
struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly 
through them. 



W 



E ARE not to expect to be translated from 
despotism to liberty in a feather bed. " 
8. 13- 

34 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

WHEN I first entered on the stage of public life 
(now 24 years ago), I came to the resolution 
never to engage while in public life in any 
kind of enterprise for the improvement of my fortune, nor 
to wear any other character than that of a farmer. I have 

never departed from it in a single instance; and 
9. 44. I have, in multiplied instances, found myself happy 

in being able to decide and to act as a public ser- 
vant, clear of all interest, in the multiform questions that 
have arisen, wherein I have seen others embarrassed and 
biased by having got themselves into a more interested 
situation. Thus I have thought myself richer in content- 
ment than I should have been with any increase of for- 
tune. Certainly, I should have been much wealthier had 
I remained in that private station which renders it lawful 
and even laudable to use proper efforts to better it. How- 
ever, my public career is now closing, and I will go through 
on the principle on which I have hitherto acted. 

. . . We, I hope, shall adhere to our republican gov- 
ernment, and keep to its original principles by narrowly 
watching it. 

TO MY fellow-citizens the debt of service has been 
fully and faithfully paid. I acknowledge that 
such a debt exists, that a tour of duty, in whatever 
line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every 
individual . . . there has been a time . . . when 
perhaps the esteem of the world was of higher 
9. 117 value in my eye than everything in it. But age, 
experience, and reflection preserving to that only 
its due value, have set a higher on tranquillity. The mo- 
tion of my blood no longer keeps time with the tumult of 
the world. It leads me to seek for happiness in the lap and 



35 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

love of my family, in the society of my neighbors and my 
books, in the wholesome occupations of my farm and my 
affairs, in an interest or affection in every bud that opens, 
in every breath that blows around me, in an entire freedom 
of rest, of motion, of thought, owing account to myself 
alone of my hours and actions. 

NO GROUND of support for the executive will ever 
be so sure as a complete knowledge of their pro- 
ceedings by the people ; and it is only in cases 
where the public good would be injured, and because it 
would be injured, that proceedings should be secret. 
9. 262. 

IN TRUTH, I did not know myself under the pens 
either of my friends or foes. It is unfortunate for 
our peace, that unmerited praise has not the power 
to heal. These are hard wages for the services of all the 
active and healthy years of one's life. I had retired after 
five and twenty years of constant occupation in 
9. 353. public affairs, and total abandonment of my own. 
I retired much poorer than when I entered the 
public service, and desired nothing but rest and oblivion. 
. . . I have no ambition to govern men; no passion 
which would lead me to delight to ride in the storm. . . . 
There is no bankrupt law in heaven by which you can get 
off with shillings on the pound. . , . 

. . . I love to see honest and honorable men at the 
helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, 
nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then 
profit by their measures. 



36 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



I 
I 



HAVE no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and 
thankless office. 
9- 357- 

THINK with the Romans that the general to-day should 
be a soldier to-morrow, if necessary. 
9- 358. 



D 



ELAY is preferable to error. 
8. 338. 



WHEN a man whose life has been marked by 
its candor has given a latter opinion contrary 
to a former one, it is probably the result of 
further inquiry, reflection, and conviction. 
9. 380. 

POLITICAL dissension is doubtless a less evil than 
the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, 
and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot 
as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, 
from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There 
is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. 
9. 389. But whether we shall be able so far to perfect 
the principles of society, as that political opinions 
shall, in its course, be as inoflfensive as those of philosophy, 
mechanics, or any other, may be well doubted. 

THEY begin to see to what port their leaders were 
steering during their slumbers, and there is yet 
time to haul in. . . . All can be done peace- 
ably, by the people confining their choice of representa- 

37 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tives and senators to persons attached to republican gov- 
ernment and the principles of 1776, not office- 

9. 420, hunters, but fartners, whose interests are entirely 

agricultural. Such men are the true representa- 
tives of the great American Interest, and are alone to be 
relied on for expressing the proper American sentiments. 
We owe gratitude to France, justice to England, good 
will to all, and subservience to none. 

I DO then, with sincere zeal, wish an inviolable preserva- 
tion of our present federal Constitution, according to 
the true sense in which it was adopted by the States, 
that in which it was advocated by its friends. ... I 
am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by 
them to the Union, and to the legislature of the 

10. 74. Union its constitutional share in the division of 

powers ; and I am not for the transferring all the 
powers of the States to the General Government, and all 
those of that government to the executive branch. I am 
for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying 
all the possible savings of the public revenue to the dis- 
charge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of 
officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for in- 
creasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle 
of its being a public blessing. 

I am for relying for internal defence upon our militia 
solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only 
as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depreda- 
tions as we have experienced, and not for a standing army 
in times of peace, which may overawe the public sentiment ; 
nor for a navy, which, by its own expenses and the eternal 
wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public 
burdens, and sink us under them. I am for free commerce 

38 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

with all nations ; political connection with none ; and little 
or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking 
ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; en- 
tering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or 
joining in the confederacy of kings to war against the 
principles of liberty. I am for freedom of religion, and 
against all manoeuvres to bring about a legal ascendency 
of one sect over another; for freedom of the press, and 
against all violations of the Constitution to silence, by force, 
and not by reason, the complaints or criticisms, just or un- 
just, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents. 



R 



EASON, not rashness, is the only means of bring- 
ing our fellow-citizens to their true minds. 
10. 89. 



I 



T IS the sick who need medicine and not the well. 
10. 103. 



OUR COUNTRY is too large to have all its affairs 
directed by a single government. Public servants 
at such a distance, and from under the eye of their 
constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be 
unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary 
for the good government of the citizens, and the 
10. 167. same circumstance, by rendering detection impos- 
sible to their constituents, will invite the public 
agents to corruption, plunder, and waste . . . the true 
theory of our constitution is surely the wisest and best, that 
the States are independent as to everything within them- 
selves, and united as to everything respectmg foreign na- 
tions. 



39 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

WHEN GREAT evils happen, I am in the habit 
of looking out for what good may arise from 
them as consolations to us, and Providence has 
so established the order of things, as that most evils are the 
means of producing some good. The yellow fever will 
discourage the growth of great cities as pesti- 
10. 173. lential to the morals, the health, and the liberties 
of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant 
arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less per- 
fection in the others, with more health, virtue, and freedom 
would be my choice. . . .1 have sworn upon the altar 
of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over 
the mind of man. 

MANY ATTEMPTS have been made to obtain terms 
and promises from me. I have declared to them 
unequivocally, that I would not receive the gov- 
ernment on capitulation, that I would not go into it with 
my hands tied. 
10. 201. 

IN THE discharge of my functions here (as President 
of the Senate), it has been my conscientious endeavor 
to observe impartial justice, without regard to per- 
sons or subjects, and if I have failed in impressing this upon 
the mind of the Senate, it will be to me a circumstance of 
deep regret. I may have erred at times — no doubt 
10. 212. I have erred ; this is the law of human nature. For 
honest errors, however, indulgence may be hoped. 

THAT PEACE, safety, and concord may be the por- 
tion of our native land, and be long enjoyed by 
our fellow-citizens, is the most ardent wish of my 
heart, and if I can be instrumental in procuring or preserv- 

40 y 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ing them, I shall think I have not lived in vain. In every 
country where man is free to speak and think, 
lo. 235. differences of opinion will arise from differences 
of perception, and the imperfection of reason ; but 
these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, 
to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing 
clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our 
horizon more bright and serene. That love of order and 
obedience to laws, which so remarkably characterize the 
citizens of the United States, are sure pledges of eternal 
tranquility; and the elective franchise, if guarded as the 
ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations 
to subvert a Constitution dictated by the wisdom and rest- 
ing on the will of the people. That will is the foundation 
of any government, and to protect its free expression should 
be our first object. 

I SINCERELY wish with you to see our government so 
secured as to depend less on the character of the per- 
son in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will some- 
times get in, and with such an immense patronage may 
make great progress in corrupting the public mind and 
principles. This is a subject with which wisdom 
10. 237. and patriotism should be occupied. 

I KNOW that in stopping thus short in the career of 
removal (of officers) I shall give great offence to 
many of my friends. That torrent has been pressing 
me heavily, and will require all my force to bear 
10. 241. up against; but my maxim is "fiat justitia, ruat 
coelum." 



41 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE CONSTITUTION on which our Union rests 
shall be administered by me according to the safe 
and honest meaning contemplated by the plain 
understanding of the people of the United States, at the 
time of its adoption. . . . The energies of the nation, 
as depends upon me, shall be reserved for im- 
lo. 248. provement of the condition of man, not wasted in 
his extinction. The lamentable resource of war is 
not authorized for evils of imagination, but for those actual 
injuries only, which would be more destructive of our well 
being than war itself. Peace, Justice, and liberal inter- 
course, with all the nations of the world, will, I hope, with 
all nations, characterize this commonwealth. 

OPINION, and the just maintenance of it, shall never 
be a crime in my view, nor bring injury on the in- 
dividual. 
10. 250. 

IT WILL be a great blessing to our country if we can 
once more restore harmony and social love among its 
citizens. I confess, as to myself, it is almost the first 
object of my heart, and one to which I would 
10. 153. sacrifice everything but principle. 

THE RIGHT of opinion shall suffer no invasion from 
me. Those who have acted well have nothing to 
fear, however they may have differed from me in 
opinion ; those who have done ill, however, have nothing to 
hope; nor shall I fail to do justice lest it should be ascribed 
to that difference of opinion. A coalition of senti- 
10. 254. ments is not for the interests of the printers. They 
. . . live by the zeal they can kindle, and the 
schisms they can create. It is the contest of opinion in 



42 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

politics as well as religion which makes us take great in- 
terest in them, and bestow our money liberally on those who 
furnish aliment to our appetite ... so the printers can 
never leave us in a state of perfect rest and union of opin- 
ion. They would be no longer useful, and would have to 
go to the plow . . . however, the steady character of 
our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; 
and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to dissemi- 
nate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate, 
and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system 
the great body of our country. 

Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall 
be able, I hope, to do a great deal of good to the cause of 
freedom and harmony. . 



I AM sensible of how far I should fall short of effecting 
all the reformation which reason would suggest, and 
experience approve, were I free to do whatever I 
thought best ; but when we reflect how difficult it is to 
move or inflect the great machine of society, how impossi- 
ble to advance the notions of a whole people sud- 
10. 255. denly to ideal right, we see the wisdom of Solon's 
remark, that no more good must be attempted 
than the nation can bear, and that all will be chiefly to re- 
form the waste of public money, and thus drive away the 
vultures who prey upon it, and improve some little on old 
routines. 



TO PRESERVE the peace of our fellow-citizens, 
promote their prosperity and happiness, reunite 
opinion, cultivate a spirit of candor, moderation, 
charity, and forbearance towards one another, are objects 



43 



V 



y 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

calling for the efforts and sacrifices of every good man and 
patriot. Our religion enjoins it; our happiness de- 
lo. 262. mands it, and no sacrifice is requisite but of pas- 
sions hostile to both. It is a momentous truth, 
and happily of universal impression on the public mind, 
that our safety rests on the preservation of our Union. Our 
citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation 
as to others and several States as among themselves. To 
the United Nation belong our external and mutual rela- 
tions, to each State severally the care of our persons, our 
property, our reputations, and religious freedom. 



THE APPROBATION of my ancient friends, is, 
above all things, the most grateful to my heart. "^ 
They know for what objects we relinquished the 
delights of domestic society, tranquility, and science, and 
committed ourselves to the ocean of revolution, to wear 

out the only life God has given us here in scenes 
10. 301. the benefits of which will accrue only to those 

who follow us. Surely, we had in view to obtain 
the theory and practice of good government ; and how any, 
who seemed so ardent in this pursuit, could have . . . 
supposed we meant only to put our government into other 
hands, but not other forms, is indeed wonderful. The 
lesson we have had will probably be useful to the people 
at large, by showing to them how capable they are of being 
made the instruments of their own bondage. 



E 



VERY honest man will suppose honest acts to flow 
from honest principles. '' 
10. 304. 



44 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



RESPECTABLE minority is useful as censors 



A 



. . . freemen, thinking differently, and speak- 
ing and acting as they think, will form into classes 

of sentiment. 

lo. 319. 

WE SHALL get entangled in European politics, 
and figuring more, be much less happy and 
prosperous. . . . 
10. 345. Some men are born for the public. Nature, by fit- 
ting them for the service of the human race on a broad scale, 
has stamped them with the evidences of her destination and 
their duty. " 

THERE ARE those who, when they cannot blame 
our acts, have recourse to the expedient of im- 
puting them to bad motives. This is a recourse 
which can never fail them, because there is no act, how- 
ever virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad 

motive . . . but I never will, by any word or 
10. 376. act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a 

right of inquiry into the religious opinions of 
others. On the contrary, we are bound, you and I, and 
every one, to make common cause, even with error itself, 
to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience. 
We ought, with one heart and one hand, to hew down the 
daring and dangerous efforts of those who would seduce 
the public opinion to substitute itself into that tyranny over 
religious faith which the laws have so justly abdicated. 

I. . . bless the Almighty being who, in gathering 
together the waters under the heavens into one place, 
divided the dry land of your hemisphere from the dry 
land of ours, and said, at least, let there be peace. I 



45 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

hope that peace and amity with all nations will long be 
the character of our land, and that its prosperity 

10. 400. under the Charter will react on the mind of 

Europe, and profit her by the example. . . . 
Washington .... the moderation of his desires, 
and the strength of his judgment, enabled him to calculate 
correctly, that the road to that glory which never dies is 
to use power for the support of the laws and liberties of 
our country, not for their destruction; and his will accord- 
ingly survives the wreck of everything now living. 

THERE is sometimes an eminence of character on 
which society have such peculiar claims as to 
control the predilections of the individual for a par- 
ticular walk of happiness, and restrain him to that alone aris- 
ing from the present and future benedictions of mankind. 
8. 348. 

THE MINORITY, having no other means of ruling 
the majority, will give a price for auxiliaries, and 
that price must be principle. ^ 

11. 24. 

WHEN YOU and I look back upon the country 
over which we have passed, what a field of 
slaughter does it exhibit! Where are all the 
friends who entered it with us, under all the inspiring 
energies of health and hope? As if pursued by the havoc 
of war they are strewed by the way, some earlier, 
II. 31. some later, and scarce a few stragglers remain to 
count the numbers fallen, and to mark yet, by 
their own fall, the last footsteps of their party. Is it a 
desirable thing to bear up through the heat of the action, 
to witness the death of all our companions, and merely be 
the last victim? I doubt it. We have, however, the travel- 

46 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

lers' consolation. Every step shortens the distance we have 
to go; the end of our journey is in sight, the bed wherein 
we are to rest, and to rise in the midst of the friends we 
have lost. "We sorrow not, then, as others that have no 
hope"; but look forward to the day which "joins us to the 
great majority." But whatever is to be our destiny, wis- 
dom, as well as duty, dictates that we should acquiesce in 
the will of Him whose it is to give and take away, and be 
contented in the enjoyment of those who are still permitted 
to be with us. 

OF THOSE connected by blood, the number does not 
depend on us. But friends we have, if we have 
merited them. Those of our earliest years stand 
nearest in our affections. 
II. 32. 

AMIDST the direct falsehoods, the misrepresenta- 
tions of truth, the calumnies, and the insults re- 
sorted to by a faction to mislead the public mind, 
and to overwhelm those entrusted with its interests, our 
support is to be found in the approving voice of our 
conscience and our country, in the testimony of 
II. T>Z- our fellow-citizens, that their confidence is not 
shaken by these artifices. ... I may err in 
my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to 
fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to 
put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of 
the many. 

No experiment can be more interesting than that we 
are now trying, and which we trust will end in estab- 
lishing the fact that man may be governed by reason and 
truth. Our first object should, therefore, be to leave open 
to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto 

47 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

found is the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by 
those who fear the investigation of their actions. The firm- 
ness with which the people have withstood the late abuses 
of the press, the discernment they have manifested be- 
tween truth and falsehood, show that they may be safely 
trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a 
correct judgment between them. ... I hold it there- 
fore certain, that to open the doors of truth, and to fortify 
the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most 
effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our suc- 
cessors to prevent their manacling the people with their 
own consent. . . . Three sons, and hopeful ones, too, 
are a rich treasure. I rejoice when I hear of young men 
of virtue and talents, worthy to receive, and likely to pre- 
serve the splendid inheritance of self-government, which 
we have acquired and shaped for them. 



I TOLERATE with the utmost latitude the right of 
others to differ from me in opinion without imputing 
to them criminality. I know too well the weakness 
and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different 
results. Both of our political parties, at least the honest 
part of them, agree conscientiously in the same 
II. 52. object — the public good; but they differ es- 
sentially in what they deem the means of ac- 
complishing that good . . . one fears most the ignor- 
ance of the people ; the other the selfishness of rulers inde- 
pendent of them. Which is right, time and experience will 
prove. . . . My anxieties on this subject will never 
carry me beyond the use of honorable means of truth and 
reason ; nor have they ever lessened my esteem for moral 
worth, nor alienated my affections from a single friend, who 
did not first withdraw himself. 



48 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

MY OPINION originally was that the President of 
the United States should be elected for a period 
of seven years, and forever ineligible afterwards. 
I have since become sensible that seven years is too long 
to be irremovable, and that there should be a peaceable way 

of withdrawing a man in midway who is do- 
ll. 58. ing wrong. The service for eight years, with a 

power to remove at the end of the first four, comas 
nearly to my principle as corrected by experience ; and it 
is in adherence to that that I determine to withdraw at the 
end of my second term. The danger is that the indulgence 
and attachments of the people will keep a man in his chair 
until he becomes a dotard, that reelection through life shall 
become habitual and election for life follow that. General 
Washington set the example of voluntary retirement after 
eight years. I shall follow it. And a few more precedents 
will oppose the obstacle of habit to any one who after a 
while shall endeavor to extend his term. 

I DO NOT express my sense of our misfortunes from 
any idea that they are remediable. I know that the 
passions of men will take their course; that they are 
not to be controlled but by despotism, and that this melan- 
choly truth is the pretext for despotism. 

The duty of an upright administration is to pursue 
II. 71. its course steadily; to know nothing of these fam- 
ily dissensions, and to cherish the good principles 
of both parties. 

IF WE suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post 
by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that 
weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose 
system of politics morality makes no part? 

49 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

^ The patriot, like the Christian, must learn that to bear 
revilings and persecutions is a part of his duty; and 
in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it be- 
comes more requisite and praiseworthy. It re- 
II, 73. quires, indeed, self-command. But that will be 
fortified in proportion as the calls for its exer- 
cise are repeated. ■ 

I DEEM it the duty of every man to devote a certain 
portion of his income for charitable purposes; and 
that it is his further duty to see it so applied as to 
do the most good of which it is capable. This I believe to 
be best insured by keeping within the circle of his own in- 
quiry and information the subjects of distress to 
II. 92. whose relief his contributions shall be applied. 

THERE is not a truth on earth which I fear or 
would disguise. But secret slanders cannot be 
disarmed, because they are secret. 
II. 94. 

THERE is a steady good sense in the legislature 
and in the body of the nation, joined with good 
intentions, which will lead them to discern and 
to pursue the public good under all circumstances which 
can arise, and that no ignis fatuus will be able long to lead 
them astray. 
II. 107. 

WE, TOO, shall encounter follies ; but if great, 
they will be short; if long they will be light, 
and the vigor of our country will get the bet- 
ter of them. 
II. 113. 



50 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON . 

ALTHOUGH our prospect is peace, our policy and 
purpose are to provide for defence by all those 
means to which our resources are competent. 

II. 121. 

WARS and contentions, indeed, fill the pages of 
history with more matter. But more blest 
is that Nation whose silent course of happi- 
ness furnishes nothing for history to say. This is what I 
ambition for my own country, and what it has enjoyed for 
upwards of twenty years, while Europe has been in con- 
stant volcanic eruption. 
II. i8o. 

I HAVE the consolation, too, of having added nothing ,, 
to my private fortune, during my public service, and 
of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty. 
II. 182. 

WITH respect to the tour my friends to the 
North have proposed that I should make in 
that quarter, I have not made up a final opin- 
ion. The course of life which General Washington ran, 
civil and military, the services he had rendered, and the 

space he, therefore, occupied in the affections of 
II. 239. his fellow-citizens, take from his examples the 

weight of precedent for others, because no others 
can arrogate to themselves the claims which he had on the 
public homage. To myself, therefore, it comes as a new 
question, to be viewed under all the phases it may present. 
I confess that I am not reconciled to the idea of a chief 
magistrate parading himself through the several States as 
an object of public gaze, and in quest of an applause which, 
to be valuable, should be purely voluntary. I had rather 



51 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

acquire silent good will by a faithful discharge of my duties 
than owe expressions of it to my putting myself in the way 
of receiving them. 

IT SEEMS that the smaller the society, the bitterer the 
dissensions into which it breaks. ... I believe 
ours is to owe its permanence to its great extent, and 
the smaller portion comparatively which can ever be con- 
vulsed at one time by local passions. 
II. 390. 

A FORTY YEARS' experience of popular assemblies 
has taught me that you must give them time for 
every step you take. If too hard pushed they 
balk, and the machine retrogrades. People generally have 
more feeling for canals and roads than education. How- 
ever, I hope we can advance them with equal pace. 

11. 400. 

FOR MYSELF I have nothing further to ask of the 
world than to preserve in retirement so much of 
its esteem as I may have fairly earned, and to be 
permitted to pass in tranquillity, in the bosom of my fam- 
ily and friends, the days which yet remain for me. Hav- 
ing reached the harbor myself, I shall view with 

12. 8. anxiety (but certainly not with a wish to be in 

their place) those who are still buffeting the 
storm, uncertain of their fate. 

I CANNOT but be deeply sensible of the good opinion 
you are pleased to express of my conduct in the ad- 
ministration of our government. This approbation 
of my fellow-citizens is the richest reward I can receive. 



52 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I am conscious of always having intended to do what was 
best for them ; and never for a single moment to 
12. 9. have listened to any personal interest of my own. 
It has been a great source of pain to me to have 
met with so many of our opponents, who had not the liber- 
ality to distinguish between political and social opposition; 
who transferred at once to the person the hatred they bore 
to his political opinions. I suppose, indeed, that in public 
life a man whose political opinions have any decided char- 
acter, and who has energy enough to give them effect, must 
always expect to encounter political hostility from those of 
adverse principles. ... If our fellow-citizens, now 
solidly republican, will sacrifice favoritism towards men for 
the preservation of principle, we may hope that no divisions 
will again endanger a degeneracy in our government. 

I SEE with pleasure ... a sound recurrence to the 
first principles on which our government was founded 
. . . a just line drawn between a wholesome at- 
tention to the conduct of rulers, and a too ready censure of 
that conduct on every unfounded rumor; between the love 
of Peace, and the determination to meet War, 
12. 17. when its evils shall be less intolerable than the 
wrong it is meant to correct. . . \ To . . . 
a union of effort may our citizens ever rally, minorities 
falling cordially, on the decision of a question, into the 
ranks of the majority, and bearing always in mind that a 
nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the 
majority ceases to be the law.'^'' 

NO INTERESTS are dearer to men than those which 
ought to be secured to them by their form of gov- 
ernment, and none deserve better of them than 
[hose who contribute to the amelioration of that form. The 



53 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

consciousness of having deserved well of mankind for your 
endeavors to be useful to them in this line will 
12. 256. be itself a high reward, to which will be added the 
homage of those who shall have reaped the bene- 
fits of them. 

WITHIN a few days I retire to my family, my 
books, and farms ; and having gained the har- 
bor myself, I shall look on my friends still 
buffeting the storm with anxiety, indeed, but not with 
envy. Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel 
such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles 
12. 258. of power. Nature intended me for the tranquil 
pursuits of science, by rendering them my su- 
preme delight. But the enormities of the times in which 
I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting 
them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of po- 
litical passions. I thank God for the opportunity of retir- 
ing from them without censure, and carrying with me the 
most consoling proofs of public approbation. 

RETURNING to the scenes of my birth and early 
life, to the society of those with whom I was 
raised, and who have been ever dear to me, I re- 
ceive, fellow-citizens and neighbors, with inexpressible 
pleasure, the cordial welcome you are so good as to give 
me. Long absent on duties which the history of 
12. 269. a wonderful era made incumbent on those called 
to them, the pomp, the turmoil, the bustle, and 
splendor of office have drawn but deeper sighs for the 
tranquil and irresponsible occupations of private life, for 
the enjoyment of an affectionate intercourse with you, my 
neighbors and friends, and the endearments of family love, 
which nature has given us all, as the sweetener of every 



54 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

hour. For these I gladly lay down the distressing burden 
of power and seek, with my fellow-citizens, repose and 
safety under the watchful cares, the labors, and perplexi- 
ties of younger and abler minds. 

TO THOSE whose views are simple and direct, it is 
a great comfort to do business with frank and 
honorable minds. 
12. 309. 

IN A GOVERNMENT like ours, it is the duty of the 
chief magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all 
the good which his station requires, to endeavor, by 
all honorable means, to unite in himself the confidence of 
the whole people. This alone, in any case, where the whole 
energy of the nation is required, can produce a 
12. 353. union of powers of the whole, and point them in 
a single direction, as if all constituted but one 
body and one mind, and this alone can render a weaker 
nation unconquerable by a stronger one. Toward acquir- 
ing the confidence of the people, the very first measure is 
to satisfy them of his disinterestedness, and that he is di- 
recting their affairs with a single eye to their good, and not 
to build up fortunes for himself and family, and especially 
that the officers appointed to transact their business, are 
appointed because they are the fittest men, not because they 
are his relations. So prone are they to suspicion, that where 
a President appoints a relation of his own, however worthy, 
they will believe that favor, not merit, was the motive. I 
therefore laid it down as a law of conduct for myself, never 
to give an appointment to a relation. 



I 



FIND in old age that the impressions of youth are the 
most lasting. Some friends indeed have left me by 
the way, seeking, by different political path, the same 



55 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

object, their country's good, which I pursued with the crowd 
along the common highway. It is a satisfaction to me that 

I was not the first to leave them. I have never 
12. 356. thought that a difference in political, any more 

than in religious opinions, should disturb the 
friendly intercourse of society. There are so many other 
topics on which friends may converse and be happy that 
it is wonderful they would select of preference the only 
one on which they cannot agree. 

IT IS a blessing, however, that our people are reason- 
able ; that they are kept so well informed of the state 
of things as to judge for themselves, to see the true 
sources of their difficulties, and to maintain their confidence 
undiminished in the wisdom and integrity of their function- 
aries. Made virtute, therefore. Continue to go 
12. 357. straight forward, pursuing always that which is 
right, as the only clue which can lead us out of 
the labyrinth. Let nothing be spared of either reason or 
passion to preserve the public confidence entire, as the only 
rock of our safety. 

In times of peace the people look most to their representa- 
tives, but in war, to the executive solely. 

MONEY, and not morality, is the principle of com- 
merce and commercial nations. ... It may 
be asked, what, in the nature of her government, 
unfits England for the observation of moral duties? In 
the first place her King is a cypher; his only function be- 
ing to name the oligarchy which is to govern her. 
12. 376. The parliament is, by corruption, the mere instru- 
ment of the will of the administration. The real 
power and property in the government is in the great aris- 
tocratical families of the nation. The nest of office being 

56 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

too small for all of them to cuddle into at once, the contest 
is eternal, which shall crowd the other out. For this pur- 
pose they are divided into two parties, the INS and the 
OUTS, so equal in weight that a small matter turns the 
balance. To keep themselves in, when they are in, every 
stratagem must be practised, every artifice used which may 
flatter the pride, the passions or power of the nation. Jus- 
tice, Honor, Faith must yield to the necessity of keeping 
themselves in place. The question whether a measure is 
moral is never asked; but whether it will nourish the 
avarice of their merchants, or the piratical spirit of their 
navy, or produce any other effect which may strengthen 
them in their places. As to engagements, however posi- 
tive, entered into by the predecessors of the INS, why, they 
were their enemies ; they did everything which was wrong ; 
and to reverse everything which they did must, therefore, 
be right. This is the true character of the English Gov- 
ernment in practice, however it may be in theory ; and it 
presents the singular phenomenon of a nation, the indi- 
viduals of which are as faithful to their private engage- 
ments and duties, as honorable, as worthy as those of any 
nation on Earth, and yet whose government is the most 
unprincipled at this day known. . . . When I observed, 
however, that the King of England was a cypher, I did 
not mean to confine the observation to the mere indi- 
vidual now on that throne. The practice of Kings marry- 
ing only in the families of Kings, has been that of Europe 
for centuries. Now% take any race of animals, confine them 
in idleness and inaction, whether in a stye, a stable, or a 
stateroom, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their 
sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their 
passions, let everything bend before them, and banish what- 
ever might lead them to think, and in a few generations 
they become all body and no mind ; and this, too, by a law 



57 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of nature, by that very law by which we are in constant 
practice of changing the characters and propensities of the 
animals we raise for our own purposes. Such is the 
regimen in raising Kings, and in this way they have gone 
on for centuries. While in Europe, I often amused myself 
with contemplating the characters of the then reigning 
sovereigns of Europe. . . . Louis XVI. was a fool, 
of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made 
for him at the trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of 
Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and 
dispatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let 
each other know what game they had killed the preceding 
days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were 
Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an 
idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their 
sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The 
King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a 
mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden 
and Joseph of Austria were really crazy, and George of 
England, you know, was in a strait waistcoat. There 
remained then none but old Catherine, who had been too 
lately picked up to have lost her common sense. 



In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this 
state of its rulers which lost it almost without a strug- 
gle. These animals had become without mind and power- 
less ; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few 
generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as 
yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is 
only of the third generation. His race is not yet worn 
out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom 
the Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such 
good men and true, in his holy keeping. 

58 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THERE will be danger that what is here proposed, 
though but an ordinary act of duty, may be di- 
verted into one of ostentation, but mahce will al- 
ways find bad motives for good actions. Shall we there- 
fore never do good? 
12. 391. 

IF I HAVE left in the breast of my fellow-citizens a 
sentiment of satisfaction with my conduct in the 
transaction of their business, it will soften the pillow 
of my repose through the residue of life. The question 
which you propose, whether circumstances do not occur 

sometimes, which make it a duty in officers of high 
12. 418. trust, to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy 

of solution in principle, but sometimes embar- 
rassing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws 
is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but 
it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preser- 
vation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher 
obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence 
to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, 
liberty, property, and all those who are enjoying them with 
us, thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When 
in the battle of Germantown, General Washington was 
annoyed from Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant 
cannon against it, although the property of a citizen. When 
he besieged Yorktown he levelled the suburbs, feeling that 
the laws of property must be postponed to the safety of 
the nation. While the army was before York, the Gover- 
nor of Virginia took horses, carriages, provisions, and even 
men, by force, to enable that army to stay together till it 
could master the public enemy, and he was justified. . . . 

The officer who is called to act on this superior 
ground does indeed risk himself on the justice of the con- 



59 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

trolling powers of the Constitution, and his station makes 
it his duty to incur that risk. But those controlling powers, 
and his fellow-citizens generally, are bound to judge ac- 
cording to the circumstances under which he acted. . . . 
\y' It is incumbent on those only who accept of great charges 
to risk themselves on great occasions, when the safety of 
the nation or some of its high interests are at stake. An 
officer is bound to obey orders, yet he would be a bad one 
if he should do it in cases for which they were not in- 
tended, and which involved the most important conse- 
quences. The line of discrimination between cases may be 
difficult, but the good officer is bound to draw it at his own 
peril, and tlirow himself on the justice of his country and 
the rectitude of his motives. 



I have indulged freer views on this question, on your 
assurance that they will not get into the hands of news 
writers. I met their scurrilities without concern while in 
pursuit of the great interests with which I was charged. 
But in my present retirement no duty forbids my wish for 
quiet. 



CONTINUALLY endangered by a powerful opposi- 
tion, they (representatives) find it convenient to 
humor the popular passions at the expense of the 
public good. The shipping interest and their janizaries of 
the navy and the commercial interest, all fattening on war, 
will not be neglected by ministers of ordinary 
12. 440. minds. Their tenure of office is so infirm that 
they dare not follow the dictates of wisdom, jus- 
tice, and the well calculated interests of their country. 



60 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I FEEL happy ... in resigning myself for the 
remnant of Hfe, to the care and guardianship of 
others. Good wishes are all an old man has to offer 
to his country or friends, 

12. 441. 

MR. ADAMS . . . said: "Well I understand 
that you are to beat me in this contest, and I will 
say that I will be as faithful a subject as any 
you have." "Mr. Adams," said I, "this is no personal con- 
test between you and me. Two systems of principles on 
the subject of government divide our fellow-citi- 

13. 5. zens into two parties. With one of these you con- 

cur, and I with the other. As we have been long- 
er on the public stage than most of those now living, our 
names happen to be more generally known. One of these 
parties has put your name at the head, the other mine." 

When the election between Burr and myself was kept 
in suspense by the federalists. . . . Mr. Adams said: 
. . . . "Sir, the event of the election is within your 
own power. You have only to say that you will do justice 
to the public creditors, maintain the navy, and not disturb 
those holding public offices, and the government will in- 
stantly be put in your hands. We know it is the wish of 
the people that it should be so." "Mr. Adams," said I, 
"I know not what part of my conduct, in either public or 
private life, can have authorized a doubt of my fidelity to 
the public engagements. I say, however, I will not come into 
the government by capitulation. I will not enter on it, but 
in perfect freedom to follow the dictates of my own judg- 
ment." 



I 



HAVE never been able to conceive how any rational be- 
ing could propose happiness to himself from the ex- 
ercise of power over others. ''>'^ 



61 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

. . . The true barriers of our liberty in this coun- 
try are our State governments ; and the wisest conserva- 
tive power ever contrived by man is that of 
which our Revolution and present government 
13. 18. found us possessed. Seventeen distinct States, 
amalgamated into one as to their foreign concerns, 
but single and independent as to their internal administra- 
tion, regularly organized with a legislature and governor 
resting on the choice of the people and enlightened by a 
free press, can never be so fascinated by the arts of one 
man as to voluntarily submit to his usurpation. 

Nor can they be constrained to it by any force he can 
possess. While that may paralyze the single State in 
which it happens to be encamped, sixteen others, spread 
over a country of 2,000 miles diameter, rise upon every 
side . . . and . . . present such obstacles to an 
usurper as forever to stifle ambition in the first conception 
of that object. 



I 



KNOW that the dissolutions of friendship are among 
the most painful occurrences in life. 
13- 59- 



POLITICS, like religion, hold up torches of martyr- 
dom to the reformers of error. Nor is it in the 
theatre of Ephesus alone that tumults have been 
excited when the crafts were in danger. 
13. 69. 



^ ^ FIND friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened 
I with age, the true old man's milk and restorative 
cordial. V 

13- 77- 

62 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

A LETTER from you (John Adams) calls up recol- 
lections very dear to my mind. It carries me back 
to the times when, beset with difficulties and 
dangers, we were fellow-laborers in the same cause, strug- 
gling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self- 
government. Laboring always at the same oar, 
13. 123. with some wave ever ahead, threatening to over- 
whelm us, and yet passing harmless under our 
bark, we knew not how we rode through the storm with 
heart and hand and made a happy port. Still, we did not 
expect to be without rubs and difficulties, and we have had 
them . . . and so we have gone on puzzled and prosper- 
ing beyond example in the history of man. And I do be- 
lieve we shall continue to grow, to multiply, and prosper, 
until we exhibit an association, powerful, wise, and happy 
beyond what has yet been seen by men. ^ 



I 



/y "^ PROFESS ... so much of the Roman principle 
as to deem it honorable for the general of yesterday 
to act as a corporal to-day, if his services can be useful 
to his country; holding that to be false pride which post- 
pones the public good to any private or personal considera- 
tions. '-^But I am past service. The hand of age is upon me. 
13. 186. 



T 



V'^T^HE HAPPINESS of the domestic fireside is the 
first boon of heaven ; and it is well it is so, since 
it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind. V 
13 220. 



MEN HAVE differed in opinion, and been divided 
into parties by these opinions, from the first 
origin of societies, and in all governments where 
they have been permitted freely to think' and to speak. 

63 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

The same political parties which now agitate the United 
States have existed through all times. Whether 
13. 279. the power of the people or that of the aristoi 
should prevail were questions which kept the 
States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions, as they 
now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are 
not shut up by the gag of a despot. And, in fact, the term 
of whig and tory belong to natural as well as civil his- 
tory. They denote the temper and constitution of mind 
of different individuals. ... To come to our own 
country ... as soon as it was put in motion, the line 
of division was drawn. We broke into two parties, each 
wishing to give the government a different direction; the 
one to strengthen the most popular branch, the other the 
more permanent branches, and to extend their permanence. 
. . . To me then it appears that there have been differ- 
ences of opinion and party differences, from the first estab- 
lishment of government to the present day, and on the 
same question which now divides our own country; that 
these will continue through all time; that every one takes 
his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to 
his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is 
placed ; that opinions which are equally honest on both sides 
should not affect personal esteem or social intercourse. 



^ /■ I ^IME ALONE insensibly wears down old habits and 
I produces small changes at long intervals, and to 

^' this process we must all accommodate ourselves, 
and be content to follow those who will not follow us. V 
13- 348. 



64 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I VERY much suspect that if thinking men would 
have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak 
what they think, it would be found they do not differ 
in . . . opinions as much as is supposed, y'' 
13- 349- 

I AGREE with you that there is a natural aristocracy 
among men. The grounds of this are virtue and tal- 
ents. Formerly bodily powers gave place among the 
aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed 
the weak, as well as the strong, with missile death, bodily 
strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness, and 
13- 396- other accomplishments, has become but an aux- 
iliary ground of distinction. There is also an 
artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without 
either virtue or talents ; for with these it would belong to 
the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the 
most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, 
the government of society. And, indeed, it would have been 
inconsistent in creation to have formed man for social state, 
and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to 
manage the concerns of society. May we not even say 
that that form of government is the best which provides 
the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural 
aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aris- 
tocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and pro- 
vision should be made to prevent its ascendency. 

CONSULT your own experience, reflect on the simi- 
lar cases which have happened within your own 
knowledge, and see if there ever was a single one 
in which such a mode of recrimination procured favor to 



65 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

him who used it. You may give pain where perhaps you 
wish it, but be assured it will react on yourself 

14. 117. with double, though delayed effect, and that it will 
be one of those incidents of your life on which 

you will never reflect with satisfaction. Be advised, then ; 

erase it even from your memory, and stand erect before the 

world on the high ground of your own merits, without 

stooping to what is unworthy either of your or their notice. 

Remember that we often repent of what we have said, but 

never, never of that which we have not. 

To ourselves in strict language we can owe no duties, 
obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love is there- 
fore no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counter- 
part. It is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us con- 
stantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation 
of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against 
this enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and 
religionists, as the only obstacle to the practice of moral- 
ity. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can 
have nothing to seduce him from the practice of virtue. 
Or subdue those propensities by education, instruction, or 
restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor . . . 
good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they 
give us pleasure? Because nature has implanted in our 
breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral 
instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and 
to succor their distresses, . . . the creator would, in- 
deed, have been a bungling artist had he intended man for 
a social animal, without planting in him social dispositions. 
It is true they are not planted in every man, because there 
is no rule without exceptions ; but it is false reasoning which 
converts exceptions into the general rule. . . . Nature 
has constituted Utility to man the standard and test of 
virtue. 

66 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

WE CANNOT always do what is absolutely best. 
Those with whom we act, entertaining differ- 
ent views, havie the power and the right of 
carrying them into practice.' Truth advances and error re- 
cedes step by step only ; and to do to our fellow-men the 
most good in our power, we must lead where we 
14. 200. can, follow where we cannot, and still go on with 
them, watching always the favorable moment for 
helping them to another step. / 

I HAVE ever deemed it more honorable and more profit- 
able, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad 
one. The good opinion of mankind, like the lever 
of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world. 
14. 222. 

I SINCERELY congratulate you on Peace. . . . 
Our second and third campaigns here, I trust, more 
than redeemed the disgraces of the first, and proved 
that although a republican government is slow to move, yet, 
when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible. 
14. 270. 

THIS must be done witli the consent of every in- 
dividual because the association being voluntary, 
the mere majority has no right to apply the con- 
tributions of the minority to purposes unspecified in the 
agreement of the (whole). 
24. 282. 

WHEN public opinion changes it is with the 
rapidity of thought. . . . Embarked in the 
same bottom, I am willing to swim or sink with 
my fellow-citizens. ... I am a great friend to the im- 

67 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

provements of roads, canals, and schools. ... If a 
nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state 
14. 382. of civilization, it expects what never was and never 
will be. The functionaries of every government 
have propensities to command at will the property and 
liberty of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for 
these but the people themselves, nor can they be safe with 
them without information. When the press is free and 
every man able to read, all is safe. 



T 



HERE IS perhaps a degree of duty to avow a change 
of opinion called for by a change of circumstances. 
14- 435- 



IT WILL be said it is easier to find faults than to amend 
them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as 
is pretended. Only lay down true principles and ad- 
here to them fixedly. Do not be frightened into surrender 
by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth 
against the ascendency of the people. . . . 
15. 35. Nomination to office is an executive function. To 
give it to the legislature as we do is a violation 
of the principle of the separation of powers. It swerves 
the members from correctness by temptations to intrigue 
for office themselves, and to a corrupt barter of votes ; and 
destroys responsibility by dividing it among a multitude. 
. . . I am not among those who fear the people. They, 
and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. 
And to preserve their independence, we must not let our 
rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our 
election between economy and liberty, or profusion and 
servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be 
taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries, 
and in our comforts, in our labors, and in our amusements, 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

for our callings and our creeds as the people of England 
are, our people like them must come to labor sixteen hours 
in the twenty-four . . . have no time to think, no 
means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad 
to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains 
on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. 

THE FIRST principle of republicanism is, that the 
lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every 
society of individuals of equal rights; to consider 
the will of the majority enounced by the majority of a 
single vote, as sacred as if unanimous, is the first of all les- 
sons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learned. ' 
15. 127. 

TO SPECIAL legislation we are generally averse, lest 
a principle of favoritism should creep in and per- 
vert that of equal rights. 
15- 139- 



N 



O GOVERNMENT can continue good, but under 
the control of the people. ^^ 
15- 234. 



IT IS true, as you say, that we have differed in political 
opinions ; but I can say with equal truth, that I never 
suffered a political to become a personal difference. 

IS- 322. 

IF THERE had been at any time a moment 
when we were off our guard, and in a temper 
to let the whispers of these people make us forget 
what we had known of each other for so many years, and 

69 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

years of so much trial, yet all men who have attended to 
the workings of the human mind, who have seen 
15. 476. the false colors under which passion sometimes 
dresses the actions and motives of others, have seen 
also those passions subsiding with time and rejflection, dissi- 
pating like mists before a rising sun, and restoring to us the 
sight of all things in their true shape and colors. It would 
be strange, indeed, if, at our years, we were to go back 
an age to hunt up imaginary or forgotten facts, to dis- 
turb the repose or affections so sweetening to the evening 
of our lives. (Letter to John Adams — 1823) 



T 



'^ / I '\HE EQUAL rights of man, and the happiness of 
every individual, are now acknowledged to be the 
only legitimate objects of government. Modern 
times have the singular advantage of having discovered 
the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit, 
government by the people, acting not in person, 
15. 482. but by representatives chosen by themselves, that 
is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane 
mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the 
support of his country. . . . And true it is that the 
people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only 
safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public 
rights, and should therefore be introduced into the adminis- 
tration of them in every function in which they are suf- 
ficient ; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never 
designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose 
of overthrowing the free principles of government. Heredi- 
tary bodies, on the contrary, always existing, always on 
the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every 
opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and 
encroaching on the rights of the people. 

70 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I AM no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do 
I consider it as either desirable or useful for the 
public; but only that, like religious differences, a dif- 
ference in politics should never be permitted to enter into 
social intercourse, or to disturb its friendships, its chari- 
ties, or justice. In that form they are censors of 
i6. y^. the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen 
for the public. Men, by their constitutions, are 
naturally divided into two parties: i. Those who fear and 
distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them 
into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify 
themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cher- 
ish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although 
not the most wise, depository of the public interests. 



In every country these two parties exist, and in every 
one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they 
will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and 
Serviles ; Jacobins and Ultras ; Whigs and Tories ; Republi- 
cans and Federalists; Aristocrats and Democrats, or by 
whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, 
and pursue the same objects. The last appellation of Aris- 
tocrats and Democrats is the true one, expressing the 
essence of all. 



A RECOLLECTION of our former vassalage in re- 
ligion and civil government will unite the zeal of 
every heart, and the energy of every hand, to pre- 
serve that independence in both, which, under the favor of 
Heaven, a disinterested devotion to the public cause first 
achieved, and a disinterested sacrifice of private 
16. 320. interests will now maintain. 



71 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



S/ 



F 



.ELLOW-CITIZENS, if we are faithful to our coun- 
try, if we acquiesce, with good will, in the decisions 
of the majority, and the Nation moves in mass in 

the same direction, although it may not be that which every 

individual thinks best, we have nothing to fear from any 

quarter, v' 

i6. 321. 

IF, IN MY retirement to the humble station of a 
private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and 
approbation of my fellow-citizens, trophies obtained 
by the blood-stained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented 
field, will never be envied.^ The care of human life and 
happiness, and not their destruction, is the first 
16. 359. and only legitimate object of good government, l^ 

SOLE depositaries of the remains of human 
liberty, our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to 
mankind, call on us by every motive which is sacred 
or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved coun- 
try, during the troubles which agitate and convulse the 
residue of the world, and to sacrifice to that all 
16. 362. personal and local considerations. 

IF THEY have done you no wrong, have you a right 
to make war upon innocent and unoffending people? 
Be assured that the Great Spirit will not approve of 
this — He did not make men strong that they might destroy 
all other men. If your young men think that in this way 
they will acquire honor as great warriors, they are 
16. 444. mistaken, ^^obody can acquire honor by doing 
what is wrong. 



72 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I HAVE ever found in my progress through Hfe, that 
acting for the pubHc, if we do always what is right, \ 
the approbation denied in the beginning will surely ' 
follow us in the end. It is from posterity we are to expect 
remuneration for the sacrifices we are making for their 

service of time, quiet, and good will. And I fear / 
i6. 99. not the appeal. 

THIS LETTER will, to you, be as one from the dead. 
The writer will be in the grave before you can 
weigh its counsels. . . . Adore God. Rever- 
ence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as 
yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. 
Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. 
16. no. So shall the life into which you have entered be 
the portal to one of eternal and ineffable happi- 
ness. . . . 

A DECALOGUE of canons for observation in prac- 
tical life : 
16. III. 

1. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. 

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself. 

3. Never spend your money before you have it. 

4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap : 

it will be dear to you. 

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold. 

6. We never repent of having eaten too little. 

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly. 

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never 

happened. 

9. Take things always by their smooth handle. 

10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, 
an hundred. 



7Z 



MASTER THOrCrHTS OF THO}[AS JEFFERSON 

WHKX inou moot togothor, thov will niako husi- 
noss if they have none; they will collate their 
i;rievances ; some real, some imaginary, all 
highly paintoil : they will communicate to each other the 
sparks of discontont ; ami these may engender a tlanie which 
will consume thoir particular, as well as the gen- 
17. 91. oral, happiness. 



. An industrious farmer occupies a more dig- 
nified place in the scale of beings, whether moral or po- 
litical, than a lazy lounger, valuing himself on his family, 
too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable exist- 
ence, by eating on the surplus of other men's labor, which 
is the sacred fund of the helpless poor. 



I LONG to be in the midst of the children, and have more 
pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of 
the wise. . . . 
iS. -'34. 



AS FOR myself, I weaken very sensibly, yet with 
such a continuance of good health as makes me 
fear I shall wear out very tediously, which is not 
what one would wish. I see no comfort in outliving one's 
friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times 
which are past. I withdraw myself as much as 
18. 297. possible from politics, and gladly shelter myself 
under the wings of the generation for which, in 
our day. we have labored faithfully to provide shelter. 



74 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

MINI-: IS the next turn, and I shall meet it with 
j^'-ood will, for after one's friends are all gone be- 
fore them, and our faculties leaving us, one by 
one, why wish to linger in mere vegetation — as a solitary 
trunk in a desolate field, from which all its former com- 
panions have disappeared? 
i8. 310. 

THE SOCIETY of our children is the sovereign balm 
of life, and the older we grow the more we need it 
to fill up the void made by the daily losses of the 
companions and friends of our youth. 
18. 320. 



75 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Chapter IV. 
Religious Views 

THE laws of nature have withheld from us the means 
of physical knowledge of the country of spirits, and 
revelation has for reasons unknown to us, chosen to 
leave us in the dark, as we were. When I was young I was 
fond of the speculations which seemed to promise some in- 
sight into that hidden country, but observing at 
10. 299. length that they left me in the same ignorance in 
which they found me, I have for many years 
ceased to read or think concerning them, and have reposed 
my head upon the pillow of ignorance which a benevolent 
Creator has made so soft for us, knowing how much we 
should have use for it. 

I have thought it better, by nourishing the good passions 
and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance in a state of 
being of which I can know but little, and to trust for the 
future to Him who has been so good for the past. 

TO the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, op- 
posed ; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus him- 
self. I am a Christian in the only sense in which 
he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines 
in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human 
excellence; and believing he never claimed any 
10. 379. other. . . .'It behooves every man who val- 
ues liberty of conscience for himself, to resist in- 
vasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by 
change of circumstances, become his own. '/' 

AS to myself, my religious reading has long been con- 
fined to the moral branch of religion, which is the 
same in all religions, while in that branch which con- 
sists of dogmas, all differ, all have a different set. 

12. 237. 

76 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

OF all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, 
which have come under my observation, none appear 
to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this 
steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot 
comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doc- 
trines by those who, calling themselves his special 
13- 2>77- followers and favorites would make him come 
into the world to lay snares for all understand- 
ings but theirs. ... in all essential points you and I 
are of the same religion and I am too old to go into inquiries 
and changes of the unessential. 

MY principle is to do whatever is right, and leave 
consequences to him who has the disposal of 
them. 
13- 387. 

IN extracting the pure principles which (Jesus) taught, 
we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in 
which they have been mufHed by priests, who have trav- 
estied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and 
power to themselves . . . there will be found remaining 
the most sublime and benevolent code of morals 

13. 389. which has ever been offered to man. 

THE doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus 
himself are within the comprehension of a child; but 
thousands of volumes have not yet explained the 
Platonisms engrafted on them. 

14. 149. 



D 



ISPUTE as long as we will on religious tenets, our 
reason at last must ultimately decide, as it is the 
only oracle which God has given us to determine 



77 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

what really comes from him, and the phantasms of a dis- 
ordered or deluded imagination. When He means to make 
personal revelation, He always carries conviction 
14. 197. of its authenticity, to the reason, He has be- 
stowed as the Umpire of truth. You believe you 
have been favored with such a special communication. Your 
reason not mine, is to judge of this; and if it shall be His 
pleasure to favor me with a like admonition, I shall obey it 
with the same fidelity with which I would obey His 
known will in all cases. Hitherto I have been under the guid- 
ance of that portion of reason which He has thought proper 
to deal out to me. I have followed it faithfully in all im- 
portant cases, to such a degree at least as leaves me without 
uneasiness; and if on minor occasions I have erred from its 
dictates, I have trust in Him who made us what we are, 
and know it was not His plan to make us always unerring. 
He has formed us moral agents. Not that in the perfection 
of His state. He can feel pain or pleasure at anything we do ; 
He is far above our power, but that we may promote the 
happiness of those with whom he has placed us iii society, 
by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall 
within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and 
mental and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience 
as we value our own. 

I must ever believe that religion substantially good which 
produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by one 
whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its 
fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of 
accountability to our God alone. I enquire after no man's, 
and trouble none with mine nor is it given to us in this life 
to know whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are 
exactly right. Nay we have heard it said there is not a 
Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a 
Catholic or a Protestant in heaven; that on entering that 

78 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find our- 
selves united in those principles only in which God has united 
us all. Let us not be uneasy then about the different roads 
we may pursue, as believing them the shortest, to that our 
last abode but following the guidance of a good conscience 
let us be happy in the hope that by these different paths we 
shall all meet in the end. 

I NEVER told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of 
another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor 
wished to change another's creed. I have ever judged 
of anothers religion by their lives . . . for it is from our 
hves, and not from our words, that our religion must be 
read. By the same test the world must judge me 
15- 60. 

I HOLD (without appeal to revelation) that when we 
take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or par- 
_ ticular, It is impossible for the human mind not to per- 
ceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and 
indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The 
movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held 
15- 426. m their course by the balance of centrifugal and 
centripetal forces the structure of the Earth it- 
self, with Its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere- 
animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest 
par icles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organ- 
ized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their Ln- 
eration and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind 
not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause and 
effect, up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all thines 
from matter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator 
while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their' 
regeneration into new and other forms. We see, too, evident 



79 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

proofs of the necessity of a superintending power, to maintain 
the universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have 
disappeared, new ones have come into view ; comets in their 
incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets, and 
require renovation under other laws ; certain races of animals 
have become extinct ; and were there no restoring power, all 
existence might extinguish successively, one by one, r>n1il 
all should be reduced to a simple chaos. So irresistible are 
these evidences of an Intelligent, and powerful Agent, that, 
of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all 
time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at 
least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of 
a Creator, rather than in that of a pre-existent Universe. 
Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable. 



80 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter V 
Educational Views 



L 



ET what will be said or done, preserve your sang- 
froid immovably and to every obstacle, oppose pa- 
tience, perseverance and soothing language. 
316. 



THE study of the law is useful in a variety of points 
of view. It qualifies a man to be useful to himself, 
to his neighbors and to the public. It is the most 
certain stepping stone in a political line. 
8. 17. 

WE owed it to do, not what would perish with our- 
selves, but what would remain, be respected, 
and preserved through other ages. And we fondly 
hope that the instruction which may flow from this institu- 
tion (University of Virginia), kindly cherished, by advanc- 
ing the minds of our youth with the growing sci- 
19. 407. ence of the times, and elevating the views of our 
citizens generally to the practice of the social du- 
ties, and the functions of self-government, may insure to our 
country the reputation, the safety and prosperity, and all the 
other blessings which experience proves to result from the 
^cultivation and improvement of the human mind. . . ., . 
\_No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity. \ 

IT was not however to be understood that instruction in 
religious opinion and duties was meant to be precluded 
by the public authorities, as indifferent to the interests of 
society. On the contrary, the relations which exist between 

81 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those re- 
lations, are the most interesting and important to 

19. 414. every human being, and the most incumbent on 
his study and investigation. 

WHILE you endeavor, by a good store of learning 
to prepare yourself to become an useful and dis- 
tinguished member of your country, you must 
remember that this can never be without uniting merit with 
your learning. Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature 

are indispensable to procure the esteem and con- 
19. 241. fidence of those with whom we live, and on whose 

esteem our happiness depends. Never suffer a 
thought to be harbored in your mind which you would not 
avow openly. When tempted to do anything in secret ask 
yourself if you would do it in public. If you would not, be 
sure it is wrong. In little disputes with your companions, give 
way rather than insist on trifles. For their love and the ap- 
probation of others will be worth more to you than the trifle 
in dispute. Above all things and at all times practice your- 
self in good humor. Whenever you feel a warmth of temper 
rising, check it at once, and suppress it, recollecting it will 
make you unhappy within yourself and disliked by others. 
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another 
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circum- 
stances. Think of these things, practice them, and you will 
be rewarded by the love and confidence of the world. 

IT is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be 
safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, 
too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction. 
This it is the business of the State to effect and on a general 
plan. 
19- 24. 



82 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

WE thought a systematic plan of education should 
be proposed, and I was requested to undertake 
it. I accordingly prepared three bills . . . 
proposing three distinct grades of education reaching all 
classes, ist. Elementary schools, for all children generally, 
rich and poor. 2nd. Colleges, for a middle de- 

1. 71. gree of instruction, calculated for the common 

purposes of life, and such as would be desirable 
for all who were in easy circumstances. And, 3rd, an ulti- 
mate grade for teaching the sciences generally, and in their 
highest degree. 

The first bill proposed to lay off every county into wards, 
of a proper size and population for a school, in which read- 
ing, writing, and common arithmetic should be taught; and 
that the whole State should be divided into . . . dis- 
tricts, in each of which should be a school for classical learn- 
ing, grammar, geography, and the higher branches of nu- 
merical arithmetic. The Second bill proposed to amend the 
Constitution of William & Mary College, to enlarge its 
sphere of science, and to make it in fact a University. The 
Third was for the establishment of a library. 

THE Objects of Primary Education: i. To give to 
every citizen the information he needs for the trans- 
action of his own business. 

2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express 
and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing. 

3. To improve by reading his morals and faculties. 

4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, 
and to discharge with competence the functions confided to 
him by either. 

5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice 
those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of 
those he delegates and to notice their conduct with diligence, 
with candor and judgment. 

2.12. 

83 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

6. And in general, to observe with intelligence and faith- 
fulness all the social relations under which he may be placed. 

HISTORY, by apprising (men) of the past, will enable 
them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the 
experience of other times and other nations ; it will 
qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; 
it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise 

it may assume ; and knowing it, to defeat its views. 
I. 207. In every government on earth is some trace of 

human weakness, some germ of corruption and de- 
generacy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness in- 
sensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government de- 
generates when entrusted to the rulers of the people alone. 
The people themselves therefore are its only safe deposi- 
tories. And to render even them safe their minds must be 
improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not all that is 
necessary, though it be essentially necessary. . . . The 
influence over government must be shared among all the 
people. If every individual which composes their mass par- 
ticipates of the ultimate authority, the government will be 
safe; because the corrupting (of) the whole mass will exceed 
any private sources of wealth; and public ones cannot be 
provided but by levies on the people. ... It has been 
thought that corruption is restrained by confining the right 
of suffrage to a few of the wealthier people ; but it would be 
more effectually restrained by an extension of that right to 
such members as would bid defiance to the means of corrup- 
tion. 

I SAT down with a design of executing your request to 
form a catalogue of books. ... A view of the sec- 
ond column in the catalogue would, I presume, extort 
a smile from the face of gravity. Peace to its wisdom ! Let 

84 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

me not awaken it. A little attention however to the nature 
of the human mind evinces that the entertainments 
4- 27,7. of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That 
they are pleasant when well written every person 
feels who reads. But wherein is its utility, asks the reverend 
sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the 
learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his 
head is stored? I answer, everything is useful which con- 
tributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue. When 
any original act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is 
presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply 
impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in our- 
selves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the con- 
trary, when we see or read of an atrocious deed, we are dis- 
gusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of 
vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our 
virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like the 
limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exer- 
cise produces habit ... we never think whether the 
story we read be truth or fiction. If the painting be lively, 
and a tolerable picture of nature, we are thrown into a rev- 
ery, from which if we awaken, it is the fault of the writer. 
. . . The field of imagination is thus laid open to our 
use, and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home 
to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and last- 
ing sense of filial duty is more efifectually impressed upon 
the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than 
by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were 
written. This is my idea of well written Romance, of Trag- 
edy, Comedy, and Epic Poetry. 

DEAR PETER — . . . Time now begins to be pre- 
cious to you. Every day you lose will retard a day 
your entrance on the public stage whereon you may 
begin to be useful to yourself. However, the way to repair 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the loss is to improve the future time. I trust that with your 
dispositions, even the acquisition of science is a 
5. 82. pleasing employment. I can assure you, that the 
possession of it is, what (next to an honest heart) 
will above all things render you dear to your friends, and 
give you fame and promotion in your own country. . . . 
When your mind shall be well improved with science, noth- 
ing will be necessary to place you in the highest points of 
view, but to pursue the interests of your country, the inter- 
ests of your friends, and your own interests, too, with the 
purest integrity, the most chaste honor. The defect of these 
virtues can never be made up by all the acquirements of 
body and mind. Make these then your first object. Give up 
money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself 
and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act. And 
never suppose, that in any possible situation, or under any 
circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, 
however slightly so it may appear to you. Whenever you 
are to do a thing, though it can never be known to any but 
yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world 
looking at you, and act accordingly. Encourage all your vir- 
tuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an oppor- 
tunity arises ; being assured they will gain strength by exer- 
cise, as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make 
them habitual. From the practise of the purest virtue, you 
may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts 
in every moment of life, and in the moment of death. If 
ever you find yourself environed with difficulties, and per- 
plexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to 
extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that 
will extricate you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner 
possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will 
untie itself before you. Nothing is so mistaken a suppo- 
sition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty. 



86 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by 
an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties 
tenfold; and those, who pursue these methods, get them- 
selves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but 
their infamy becomes more exposed. It is of great impor- 
tance to set a resolution, not be shaken, never to tell an un- 
truth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; 
and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much 
easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it be- 
comes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and 
truths without the world believing him. This falsehood of 
tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all 
its good dispositions. An honest heart being the first bless- 
ing, a knowing head is the second ... in order to in- 
sure a certain progress in reading, consider what hours you 
have free from the school and the exercises of the school. 
Give about two of them every day to exercise ; for health 
must not be sacrificed to learning. A strong body makes the 
mind strong. As to the species of exercise I advise the gun. 
While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives 
boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games 
played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too 
violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. 
Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your 
walks. Never think of taking your book with you. The 
object of walking is to relax the mind. You should there- 
fore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but 
divert yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is 
the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very 
far. The Europeans value themselves on having subdued 
the horse to the uses of man ; but I doubt whether we have 
not lost more than we have gained, by the use of this ani- 
mal. No one has occasioned so much the degeneracy of the 
human body. An Indian goes on foot nearly as far in a day, 



87 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

for a long journey, as an enfeebled white does on his horse, 
and he will tire the best horses. There is no habit you will 
value so much as that of walking far without fatigue. I 
would advise you to take your exercise in the afternoon : not 
because it is the best time for exercise, for certainly it is 
not ; but because it is the best time you can spare from your 
studies ; and habit will soon reconcile it to your health, and 
render it nearly as useful to you as if you gave to that the 
more precious hours of the day. A little walk of half an 
hour, in the morning, when you first arise, is advisable also. 
It shakes oflf sleep, and produces other good effects in the 
animal economy. Rise at a fixed and early hour also. Sit- 
ting up late at night is injurious to the health, and not use- 
ful to the mind. Having ascribed proper hours to exercise, 
divide what remain (I mean of your vacant hours) into 
three portions. Give the principal to history, the other two, 
which should be shorter, to Philosophy and poetry. . . . 
The plan I have proposed for you is adapted to your present 
situation only. When that is changed I will propose a cor- 
responding change of plan. ... I have nothing further 
to add for the present, but husband well your time, cherish 
your instructors, strive to make everybody your friend. . . . 
(Letter to Peter Carr, 1785.) 

WITH respect to what are termed polite manners, 
without sacrificing too much the sincerity of 
language, I would wish my countrymen to adopt 
just so much of European politeness, as to be ready to make 
all those little sacrifices of self, which really render Euro- 
pean manners amiable, and relieve society from 
5. 150. the disagreeable scenes to which rudeness often 
subjects it. Here, it seems that a man might pass 
a life without encountering a single rudeness. In the pleas- 
ures of the table they are far before us, because, with good 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

taste they unite temperance. They do not terminate the 
most sociable meals by transforming themselves into brutes. 
I have never yet seen a man drunk in France, even among 
the lowest of the people. 

WHY send an American youth to Europe for edu- 
cation? If he goes to England he learns drink- 
ing, horse-racing and boxing. These are the 
peculiarities of English education. The following circum- 
stances are common to education in that, and the other coun- 
tries of Europe. He acquires a fondness for Eu- 
5. 185. ropean luxury and dissipation, and a contempt for 
the simplicity of his own country ; he is fascinated 
with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and sees, 
with abhorrence, the lovely equality which the poor enjoy 
with the rich in his own country ; he contracts a partiality 
for aristocracy ... he forms foreign friendships 
which will never be useful to him, and loses the seasons of 
life for forming, in his own country, those friendships, 
which of all others, are the most faithful and permanent; 
he is led by the strongest of all human passions, into a spirit 
of female intrigue, destructive of his own and others happi- 
ness, or a passion for whores, destructive of his health, and 
in both cases, learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed 
as an ungentlemanly practice, and inconsistent with happi- 
ness ; he recollects the voluptuary dress and arts of the Euro- 
pean women, and pities and despises the chaste affections 
and simplicity of those of his own country; he retains 
through life a fond recollection, and a hankering after those 
places, which were the scenes of his first pleasures and his 
first connections ; he returns to his own country a foreigner ; 
unacquainted with the practices of domestic economy, neces- 
sary to preserve him from ruin, speaking and writing his 
native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to 

89 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

obtain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen and 
tongue insures in a free country. For I would observe to 
you, that what is called style in writing or speaking is 
formed very early in life, while the imagination is warm and 
impressions are permanent. ... It appears to me, then, 
that an American coming to Europe for education, loses in 
his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in his habits, and 
in his happiness. I had entertained only doubts on this head 
before I came to Europe ; what I see and hear, since I came 
here, proves more than I had even suspected. Cast your 
eye over America : who are the men of most learning, of 
most eloquence, most beloved by their countrymen and 
most trusted and promoted by them? They are those who 
have been educated among them, and whose manners, mor- 
als, and habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the 
country. 

OUR act for Freedom of Religion is extremely ap- 
plauded. I think it will produce considerable good 
even in these countries, where ignorance, supersti- 
tion, poverty, and oppression of body and mind, in every 
form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that 
their redemption from them can never be hoped. 
5. 394. If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set them- 
selves to work, to emancipate the minds of their 
subjects from their present ignorance and prejudices, and 
that as zealously as they now do to the contrary, a thousand 
years would not place them on that high ground, on which 
our common people are now setting out. Ours could not 
have been so fairly placed under the control of the common- 
sense of the people, had they not been separated from their 
parent stock, and kept from contamination, either from them 
or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of 
so wide an ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see 



90 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the want of it here (Paris). I think by far the most impor- 
tant bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of 
knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can 
be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness. 
If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, priests are good con- 
servators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the 
best school in the Universe to cure him of his folly. He 
will see here, with his own eyes, that these descriptions of 
men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of 
the mass of the people. 

The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved 
than in this country particularly, where, notwithstanding the 
finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and 
a people of the most benevolent, the most gay and amiable 
character of which the human form is susceptible; where 
such a people, I say, surrounded by so many blessings of 
nature, are loaded with misery, by kings, nobles and priests, 
and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against 
ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the 
common people. Let our countrymen know, that the people 
alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax 
which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the 
thousandth part of what will be paid to Kings, priests and 
nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the People 
in ignorance. 

I HAVE proposed to you, to carry on the study of law 
with that of politics and history. Every political meas- 
ure will forever have an intimate connection with the 
laws of the land; and he, who knows nothing of these, will 
always be perplexed and often foiled by adversaries having 
the advantage of that knowledge over him. Be- 
6. 167. sides, it is a source of infinite comfort to reflect, 
that under every chance of fortune, we have a 



91 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

resource in ourselves from which we may be able to derive 
an honorable subsistence. I would therefore not only pro- 
pose the study, but the practice of the law for some time, to 
possess yourself of the habit of public speaking. . . . 
With your talents and industry, with science, and that stead- 
fast honesty which eternally pursues right, regardless of con- 
sequences, you may promise yourself everything, but health, 
without which there is no happiness. An attention to health 
then, should take place of every other object. The time 
necessary to secure this by active exercises should be de- 
voted to it, in preference to every other pursuit. I know 
the difficulty with which a studious man tears himself from 
his studies, at any given moment of the day. But his hap- 
piness and that of his family depend upon it. The most 
uninformed mind with a healthy body, is happier than the 
wisest valetudinarian. 

MORAL Philosophy. I think it lost time to attend 
lectures on this branch. He who made us would 
have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the 
rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one 
man of science, there are thousands who are not. What 

has become of them? Man was destined for 
10. 178. society. His morality, therefore, was to be 

formed for this object. He was endowed with a 
sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this. This sense 
is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, see- 
ing, feeling; . . . the moral sense, or conscience, is as 
much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all 
human beings in a greater or less degree. It may be 
strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the 
body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to 
the guidance of reason ; but it is a small stock which is re- 
quired for this ; even a less one than what we call common 



92 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. 
The former will decide it as well, and often better than the 
latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. 
... In fine I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice 
on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, be- 
cause any other persons or descriptions of persons, have re- 
jected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle 
given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the 
rightness, but uprightness of the decision 



TRAVELLING. This makes men wiser, but less 
happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather 
knowledge which they may apply usefully for their 
country; but they are subject ever after to recollections 
mixed with regret; their affections are weakened by being 
6.131. extended over more objects; and they learn new 

6.261. habits which cannot be gratified when they return 

6.262. home. . . . (To Young men) The glare of 
pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood ; 
it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn 
from it as from the only good in this world and return to 
their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. . . 
Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not 
want the aid of travelling, to render you precious to your 
country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself. I re- 
peat my advice, to take a great deal of exercise and on foot. 
Health is the first requisite after morality. . . . 



I DO most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of 
education given to the highest degrees of genius, and to 
all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read 
and understand what is going on in the world, and to keep 

93 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

their part of it going on right : for nothing can keep it right 

but their own vigilant and distrustful superintend- 

9. 306. ence. I do not believe . . . with the , . . 

Montaignes, that fourteen out of fifteen men are 

rogues : I believe a great abatement from that proportion may 

be made in favor of general honesty. But I have always 

found that rogues will be uppermost, and I do not know 

that the proportion is too strong for the higher orders, and 

for those who rising above the . . . multitude, always 

contrive to nestle themselves into the places of power and 

profit. These rogues set out with stealing the peoples good 

opinion, and then steal from them the right of withdrawing 

it, by contriving laws and associations against the power of 

the people themselves. 

I AM not a friend to placing young men in populous cities, 
because they acquire habits and partialities which do 
not contribute to the happiness of their after life. 
II. 242. 

NEVER fear the want of business. A man who quali-\ 
fies himself well for his calling, never fails of em- 
ployment in it. The foundation you will have laid 
in legal reading, will enable you to take a higher ground 
than most of your competitors, and even ignorant men can 
see who it is that is not one of themselves. Go 
8. 385. on then with courage, and you will be sure of 
success. 

COKE LITTLETON was the Universal law book of 
students and a sounder whig never wrote, nor of pro- 
founder learning in the orthodox doctrines of the 
British Constitution, or in what was called British Liberties. 



94 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Our lawyers were then all whigs. But when his black letter 
text and uncouth but cunning learning got out of 
12. 4. fashion, and the honeyed Mansfieldism of Black- 
stone became the students hornbook, from that 
moment that profession (the nursery of our Congress) be- 
gan to slide into toryism, and nearly all the Young brood of 
lawyers are now of that line. They suppose themselves to 
be whigs, because they no longer know what Whigism or 
Republicanism means. 

A DETERMINATION never to do what is wrong, 
prudence and good humor, will go far towards se- 
curing to you the estimation of the world. When I 
recollect that at fourteen years of age the whole care and 
direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without 
a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide 
12. 197. me, and recollect the various sorts of bad com- 
pany with which I associated from time to time, 
I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, and 
become as worthless to society as they were. I had the good 
fortune to become acquainted very early with some char- 
acters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish 
that I could ever become what they w^ere. Under tempta- 
tions and difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. 
Small, Air. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in this situation? 
What course in it will insure me their approbation? I am 
sure that this mode of deciding on my conduct tended more 
to correctness than any reasoning powers I possessed. Know- 
ing the even and dignified line they pursued I could never 
doubt for a moment which of two courses would be in char- 
acter for them. Whereas seeking the same object through 
a process of moral reasoning, and with the jaundiced eye of 
youth, I should often have erred. From the circumstances 
of my position, I was often thrown into the society of horse 

95 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

racers, card players, fox hunters, scientific and professional 
men, and of dignified men ; and many a time have I asked 
myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, 
the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question elo- 
quently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the 
nation, well, which of these kinds of reputation would you 
prefer? that of a horse jockey? a fox hunter? an orator? or 
the honest advocate of my countries rights? Be assured, 
my dear Jefferson, that these little returns into ourselves, 
this self-catechising habit, is not trifling nor useless, but leads 
to the prudent selection and steady pursuit of what is right. 

I have mentioned good humor as one of the preservatives 
of our peace and tranquillity. It is among the most effectual, 
and its effect is so well imitated and aided, artificially, by 
politeness, that this also becomes an acquisition of first rate 
value. In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it cov- 
ers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a 
substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. It is the prac- 
tice of sacrificing to those whom we meet in society, all the 
little conveniences and preferences which will gratify them, 
and deprive us of nothing worth a moment's consideration; 
it is the giving a pleasing and flattering turn to our expres- 
sions, which will conciliate others, and make them pleased 
with us as well as themselves. How cheap a price for the 
good will of another ! When this in return for a rude thing 
said by another, it brings him to his senses, it mortifies and 
corrects him in the most salutary way, and places him at the 
feet of your good nature, in the eyes of the company. 

But in stating the prudential rules for our government in 
society, I must not omit the important one of never entering 
into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an in- 
stance of one of two disputants convincing the other by 
argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, be- 
coming rude and shooting one another. Conviction is the 



96 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude 
or weighing with ourselves dispassionately what we hear 
from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. 
It was one of the rules which above all others made Dr. 
Franklin the most amiable of all men in society, "never to 
contradict anybody." If he was urged to announce an opin- 
ion he did it rather by asking questions, as if for informa- 
tion, or b^ suggesting doubts. When I hear another express 
an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right 
to his opinion, as I to mine ; why should I question it ? His 
error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, 
to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? If a 
fact be misstated, it is probable he is gratified by a belief of 
it, and I have no right to deprive him of the gratification. 
If he wants information he will ask for it, and then I will 
give it in measured terms; but if he still believe his own 
story, and shows a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear 
him and say nothing. It is his affair, not mine, if he prefers 
error. 

There are two classes of disputants most frequently to 
be met with among us. The first is of young students, just 
entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its out- 
lines, not yet filled up with the details and modifications 
which a further progress would bring to their knowledge. 
The other consists in the ill-tempered and rude men in so- 
ciety, who have taken up a passion for politics. Good hu- 
mor and politeness never introduce into mixed society, a 
question on which they foresee there will be a difiference of 
opinion. From both of these classes of disputants, my dear 
Jefferson, keep aloof, as you would from the infected sub- 
jects of yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself when 
with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medi- 
cal more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within 
yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit 

97 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our 
country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one 
of these zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They 
are determined upon the facts they will believe, and the 
opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as 
you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense 
to dispute the road with such an animal. You will be more 
exposed than others . . . because of the relation in 
which you stand to me. 

My character is not within their power. It is in the hands 
of my fellow citizens at large, and will be consigned to honor 
or infamy by the verdict of the republican mass of our 
country, according to what themselves have seen, not what 
their enemies and mine will have said. 

I ALWAYS hear with pleasure of institutions for the 
promotion of knowledge among my countrymen. The 
people of every country are the only safe guardians of 
their own rights, and are the only instruments which can 
be used for their destruction. And certainly they would 
never consent to be so used were they not de- 
12. 282. ceived. To avoid this, they should be instructed 
to a certain degree. "* I have often thought that 
nothing would do more extensive good at small expense 
than the establishment of a small circulating library in every 
county, to consist of a few well chosen books, to be lent to 
the people of the country, under such regulations as would 
secure their safe return in due i\mt.V 

1 / I "VHE boys of the rising generation are to be the men 

■*~ I of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles 

we deliver over to them. . . . Truth and reason 

are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally 

98 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



prevail, however in times and places they may be overbourne 
for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesi- 

12. 360. astical. The preservation of the holy fire is con- 
fided to us by the world, and the sparks which 

emanate from it will ever serve to kindle it in other quarters 

of the globe. Numinibus secundis. * 

AT sixty-seven years of age, I talk of ploughs and 
harrows, of seeding and harvesting, with my neigh- 
bors, and of politics, too, if they choose, with as 
little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel at 
length, the blessing of being free to say what I think and 
do what I please, without being responsible to any 
12. 368. mortal. 

A part of my occupation, and by no means the 
least pleasing, is the direction of the studies of such young 
men as ask it. They place themselves in the neighboring vil- 
lage, and have the use of my library and counsel, and make 
a part of my study. In advising the course of their reading, 
I endeavor to keep their attention fixed on the main objects 
of all science, the freedom and happiness of man, so that 
coming to bear a share in the councils and government of 
their country, they will keep ever in view the sole objects 
of all legitimate government. '- 

WHEN sobered by experience, I hope our succes- 
sors will turn their attention to the advantages 
of education. I mean of education on the broad 
scale, and not that of our petty academies, as they call them- 
selves, which are starting up in every neighborhood and 
where one or two men, possessing Latin and some- 
14- 150- times Greek, a knowledge of the Globes, and the 
first six books of Euclid, imagine and com- 
municate this as the sum of science (knowledge). They 
commit their pupils to the theatre of the world, with just 

99 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

taste enough of learning to be alienated from Industrious 
pursuits, and not enough to do service in the ranks of sci- 
ence. We have some exceptions indeed . . . but the 
facts I present are general truths. 

AND if the Wise be the happy man, as these sages 
say, he must be virtuous, too; for, without virtue, 
happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of 
all academical emulation. 
14. 405. 

ENLIGHTEN the people generally, and tyranny and 
oppression of the body and mind will vanish like 
evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, 
like some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will 
ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall 
no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I be- 
14. 491. lieve it susceptible of much improvement, and 
most of all in matters of government and religion ; 
and that the diffusion of knowledge among the People is to 
be the instrument by which it is to be effected. 

IN a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by 
reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of rea- 
soning becomes of first importance. . . . Amplifica- 
tion is the vice of the modern orator. It is an insult to an 
assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead 
of persuading. Speeches measured by the hour 
16. 30. die with the hour, 
j. 

ALL eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. 
The general spread of the light of science has al- 
ready laid open to every view the palpable truth, 
that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles 



100 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready 
to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. 
1 6. 182. 

AVOID the subject of politics in society, and generally 
shun disputation on every subject, which never did 
convince an antagonist, and too often alienates a 
frienc!, besides being always an uneasy thing to a good tem- 
pered society. 
18. 253. 

OUR University goes on well. As yet it has been a 
model of order and good behavior, having never yet 
had occasion for the exercise of a single act of au- 
thority. We studiously avoid too much government. We 
treat students as men and gentlemen, under the guidance 
mainly of their own discretion. They so consider 
18. 341. themselves, and make it their pride to acquire that 
character for their institution. 



lOI 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter VI. 
Summary View of the Rights of British America 

REMIND him (George the Third) that our ancestors, 
before their emigration to America, were the free 
inhabitants of the British dominions in Europe, and 
possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of 
departing from the Country in which chance, not choice, has 
placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, 
I. 185. and of there establishing new societies, under 
such laws and regulations as to them shall seem 
most likely to promote pubHc happiness. . . . America 
was conquered, and her settlements made and firmly estab- 
lished, at the expense of individuals and not of the British 
Public. Their own blood was spilt in acquiring lands for 
their settlement, their own fortunes expended in making that 
settlement effectual. For themselves they fought, for them- 
selves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have 
right to hold. . . . That settlement having been thus ef- 
fected in the Wilds of America, the emigrants thought prop- 
er to adopt that system of laws to which they had been ac- 
customed in the Mother Country, and to continue their 
Union with her, by submitting themselves to the same com- 
mon sovereign, who was thereby made the central link con- 
necting the several parts of the Empire thus newly mul- 
tiplied. . . . History has informed us that Bodies of 
men as well as Individuals, are susceptable of tyranny . . . 
the true ground on which we declare these acts void, is, 
that the British Parliament has no authority over us. . . . 
Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the as- 
tonishment into which one stroke of Parliamentary thunder 
has involved us, before another more heavy and more alarm- 
ing is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed 



102 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppres- 
sions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalter- 
ably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a 
deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. . . . 
One free and independent Legislature, hereby (by the act 
of parliament suspending the Legislature of New York) 
takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free and 
Independent as itself. . . . Not only the principles of 
common sense, but the common feelings of human nature 
must be surrendered up, before His Majesty's subjects here, 
can be persuaded to believe, that they hold their existence 
at the will of a British Parliament. . . . Should these 
governments be dissolved, their property annihilated, and 
their People reduced to a State of Nature, at the imperious 
breath of a body of men, whom they never saw, in whom 
they never confided, and over whom they have no powers of 
punishment or removal, let their crimes against the Ameri- 
can Public be ever so great? Can any one reason be as- 
signed, why one hundred and sixty thousand electors in the 
Island of Great Britain, should give law to four millions in 
the States of America, every individual of whom is equal to 
every individual of them in virtue, in understanding, and in 
bodily strength ? Were this to be admitted, instead of being 
a free people, as we have hitherto supposed and mean to 
continue ourselves, we should suddenly be found the slaves, 
not of one but of one hundred and sixty thousand tyrants; 
distinguished, too, from all others by this singular circum- 
stance, that they are removed from the reach of fear, the 
only restraining motive which may hold the hand of a tyrant. 
. . . There are extraordinary situations which require 
extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people who 
feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within 
limits strictly regular. A number of them assembled in the 
town of Boston threw the tea into the Ocean, and dispersed 



103 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

without doing any other act of violence. . . . On the 
partial representations of a few ministerial dependents 
. . . without calling for a party accused, without asking 
a proof, without attempting a distinction between the guilty 
and the innocent, the whole of that ancient and wealthy 
town is in a moment reduced from opulence to beggary 
. . . not the hundredth part of the inhabitants of that 
town, had been concerned in the act complained of; many 
of them were in Great Britain, and in other parts beyond the 
sea; yet all were involved in one indiscriminate ruin, by a 
new executive power, unheard of till then, that of a British 
Parliament. . . . This is administering justice with a 
heavy hand indeed ! By the act for the suppression of riots 
and tumults in the town of Boston passed also in the last 
session of Parliament, a murder committed there, is, if the 
Governor pleases, to be tried in the Court of Kings Bench, 
in the Island of Great Britain, by a jury of Middlesex 
. . . and the wretched criminal, if he happen to have 
offended on the American side, stripped of his privilege of 
trial by peers of his vicinage, removed from the place where 
alone evidence could be obtained, without money, without 
counsel, without friends, without exculpatory proof, is tried 
before judges predetermined to condemn. The cowards who 
would suffer a countryman to be torn from the bowels of 
their society, in order to be thus offered a sacrifice to Parlia- 
mentary tyranny, would merit that everlasting infamy, now 
fixed on the authors of the act ! . . . When the Repre- 
sentative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, 
when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable 
rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which 
the people never put into their hands, then, indeed, their 
continuing in office becomes dangerous to the State. . . . 
From the Nature of things, every society must, at all times, 
possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The 



104 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a 
State so situated, as that it may not, in any emergency, 
provide against dangers which, perhaps, threaten immediate 
ruin. . . . While those bodies are in existence to whom 
the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they 
alone possess and may exercise, those powers. But when 
they are dissolved . . . the power reverts to the people, 
who may use it to unlimited extent, either assembling in 
person, sending deputies, or in any way they think proper. 

Can his Majesty thus put down all law under his feet? 
Can he erect a power superior to that which erected him- 
self? He has done it indeed by force but let him remember 
that force cannot give right. 
"*• Let those flatter who fear : it is not an American art. — 

To give praise where it is not due might be well for the 
venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the 
rights of human nature. They know and will therefore, say, 
that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the Peo- 
ple. . . . The great principles of right and wrong are 
legible to every reader; to pursue them, requires not the 
aid of many counsellors. 

The whole art of government consists in the art of being 
honest. Only aim to do your duty and mankind will give 
you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing 
the rights of one part of the Empire to the inordinate desires 
of another ; but deal out to all equal and impartial right. 
Let no act be passed by one legislature which may infringe 
on the rights and liberties of another. . . . It is neither 
our wish nor our interest to separate from her (England). 
We are willing on our part to sacrifice everything which 
reason can ask, to the restoration of that tranquility for 
which all must wish. . . . The God who gave us life, 
gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may de- 
stroy, but cannot disjoin them. . . . This, Sire, is our 
last, our determined resolution. 

105 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter VII. 
Basic Principles of Government 

WHEN in the course of human events, it becomes 
necessary for one people to dissolve the political 
bands which have connected them with another, 
and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate 
and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Na- 
ture's God entitle them, a decent respect for the 
19. 278. opinions of mankind requires that they should de- 
clare the causes which impel them to the separa- 
tion. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure these rights 
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just 
powers from the consent of the governed ; that whenever any 
form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is 
the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to insti- 
tute new government, laying its foundations on such prin- 
ciples, and organizing its powers in such form as to them 
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long estab- 
lished shall not be changed for light and transient causes ; 
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are 
more disposed to sufifer while evils are sufferable than to 
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are 
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpa- 
tions, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design 
to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, 
it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide 
new guards for their future security. 

106 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE Stamp act was passed in February, 1765. What 
powers the ParHament might rightfully exercise over 
us, and whether any, had never been declared either 
by them or us. They had very early taken the gigantic step 
of passing the Navigation act. The colonies remonstrated 

violently against it, and one of them, Virginia, 
17. 125. when she capitulated to the Commonwealth of 

England, expressly stipulated for a free trade. 
This was as little regarded as the original right, restored by 
it, had been. . . . When they (parliament) proposed to 
consider us merely as objects of taxation, all the States took 
alarm. . . . Sound heads saw in the first moment, that 
he who could put down the loom, could stop the spinning 
wheel, and he who could stop the spinning wheel could tie 
the hands which turned it. . . . Who were to be 
judges whether duties were imposed with a view to burden 
and suppress a branch of manufacture, or to raise a reve- 
nue? If either party exclusively of the other, it was plain 
where that would end. If both parties, it was plain where 
that would end also. They saw, therefore, no sure clue to 
lead them out of their difficulties but reason and right. They 
dared to follow them assured that they (reason and right) 
alone could lead them to defensible ground. The first ele- 
ments of reason showed that the members of Parliament 
could have no power which the people of the several coun- 
ties had not. That these had naturally a power over their 
own farms, and collectively over all England. That if they 
had any power over countries out of England, it must be 
founded on compact or force. No compact could be shown. 
• • • (133) This is a luminous idea, and worthy of be- 
ing a little more developed. It places the question between 
England and America in the simplest form possible. No 
Englishman can pretend that a right to participate in gov- 
ernment can be derived from any other source than a f'Cr- 



107 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

sonal right, or a right of property. The conclusion is in- 
evitable that he, who had neither his person nor property in 
America, could not rightfully assume a participation in its 
government. 



C 



ONQUEST is not in our principles ; it is inconsistent 
with our government. 
17. 396. 



PRIAIA facie, it accorded well with two favorite ideas 
of mine, of leaving commerce free, and never keeping 
an unnecessary soldier. 
17- 330. 

THE only orthodox object of the institution of govern- 
ment is to secure the greatest degree of happiness 
possible to the general mass of those associated un- 
der it. The events which this work proposes to embrace will 
establish the fact that unless the mass retains sufficient con- 
trol over those intrusted with the powers of gov- 
13- 135- ernment, these will be perverted to their own op- 
pression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and 
power in the individuals and their families selected for the 
trust. 

I HAVE indeed two great measures at heart, without 
which no republic can maintain itself in strength. 
I. That of general education, to enable every man to 
judge for himself wdiat will secure or endanger his freedom. 
2. To divide every count}^ into hundreds, and of such size 
that all the children of each will be within reach 
12. 393. of a central school in it. But this division looks 
to many other fundamental provisions. . . . 
These little republics would be the main strength of the 

108 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our revo- 
kition in its commencement in the Eastern States, 
and by them the Eastern States were enabled to ro()eal the 
embargo in opposition to the Middle, Southern and Western 
States, and their large and lubberly division into counties 
which can never be assembled. General orders are given 
out from the centre to the foreman of every hundred, as to 
the sergeants of an army, and the whole nation is thrown 
into energetic action, in the same direction in one instant, as 
one man, and becomes absolutely irresistible. Could I once 
see this I should consider it as the dawn of the Salvation of 
the republic, and say with old Simion, "Nunc Dimittis, Do- 
mine." But our children will be as wise as we are and will 
establish in the fullness of time those things not yet ripe for 
establishment. So be it. 

I OWN I am not a friend to a very energetic government. 
It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed 
more at their ease, at the expense of the people. The 
late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I 
think it should have done. . . . Nor will any degree of 
power in the hands of government prevent insur- 
6. 391. rections. In England, where the hand of power 
is heavier than with us, there are seldom less than 
half a dozen years without an insurrection. In Turkey, 
where the sole nod of the despot is death, insurrections are 
the events of every day. . . . And say finally whether 
peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, 
or information to the people. This last is the most certain, 
and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and 
inform the mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is 
to their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will 
preserve them.' And it requires no very high degree of edu- 
cation to convince them of this. They are the only sure re- 

109 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

liance for the preservation of our liberty. After all, it is 
my principle that the will of the majority should prevail 
. . . this reliance cannot deceive us as long as we remain 
virtuous ; and I think we shall be so, as long as agriculture 
is our main object, which will be the case, while there re- 
main vacant lands in any part of America. When we s;et 
piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall 
become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another 
as they do there. 



WHERE does this anarchy exist? Where did it 
ever exist except in the single instance of Massa- 
chusetts? And can history produce an instance 
of rebellion so honorably conducted? I say nothing of its 
motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. 

God forbid we should ever be twenty years with- 
6. 371. out such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, 

and always well informed. That which is wrong 
will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the 
facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such 
misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to 
the public liberty. We have had thirteen States independent 
for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes 
to one rebellion in a century. What country before ever 
existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what 
country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned 
from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of 
resistance ? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them 
right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a 
few lives lost in a century or two ? ' The tree of liberty must 
be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots 
and tyrants. It is its natural manure. 



no 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THIS uneasiness has produced acts entirely unjusti- 
fiable, but I hope they will provoke no severities 
from their governments. A consciousness of those 
in power that their administration of the public affairs has 
been honest, may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of 
indignation; and those characters, wherein fear 
6. 64. predominates over hope, may apprehend too much 
from these instances of irregularity. They may 
conclude too hastily, that nature has formed man insus- 
ceptible of any other government than that of force, a con- 
clusion not founded in truth nor experience. Societies exist 
under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable, i. Without 
government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments 
wherein the will of every one has a just influence ; as is the 
case in England, in a slight degree, and in our States, in a 
great one. 3. Under Governments of force ; as is the case in 
all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. 
To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, 
they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. 
It is a problem not clear in my mind, that the first condition 
is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any 
great degree of population. The second state has a great deal 
of good in it. The mass of mankind under that, enjoys a pre- 
cious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; 
the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is sub- 
ject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, 
and it becomes nothing. . . . Even this evil is productive 
of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and 
nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. ' I hold it 
that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as 
necessary in the political world as the storms in the physical. Y 
Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the en- 
croachments on the rights of the people, which have pro- 
duced them. An observation of this truth should render 



III 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of 
rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a 
medicine necessary to the health of government. 



T 



HEY (Congress) will restrain within due bounds a 
jurisdiction exercised by others, much more rigor- 
ously than if exercised by themselves. 

131- 



TO make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and 
keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outline 
of the proper division of powers between the general 
and particular governments. 
6. 8. 



W 
I 



ITHOUT society, and a society to our taste, men 
are never contented. 
6. 15- 



CAN never fear that things will go wrong where com- 
mon sense has fair play. 
6. 19. 



I AM persuaded myself that the good sense of the people 
will always be found to be the best army. They may 
be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct them- 
selves. The people are the only censors of their governors ; 
and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true 
principles of their institution. To punish these 
6. 55. errors too severely would be to suppress the only 
safeguard of the public liberty. The way to pre- 
vent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give 



112 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

them full information of their affairs through the channel of 
the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should 
penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our 
governments being the opinion of the people, the very first 
object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me 
to decide whether we should have a government without 
newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should 
not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should 
mean that every man was to receive those papers, and be 
capable of reading them. 

I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which 
live without government, enjoy in their general mass a great- 
er degree of happiness than those who live under the Euro- 
pean governments. Among the former, public opinion is in 
the place of the law, and restrains morals as powerfully as 
laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence 
of governing, they have divided their nations into two class- 
es, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate. This is a true 
picture of Europe. Cherish therefore the spirit of our peo- 
ple, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe 
upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. 
If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and 
I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall 
all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general 
nature, in spite of individual exceptions ; and experience 
declares that man is the only animal which devours his own 
kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of 
EUROPE, and the general prey of the rich on the poor. 

WERE armies to be raised whenever a speck of 
war is visible in our horizon, we never should 
have been without them. Our resources would 
have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened. 



"3 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Instead of being reserved for what is really to take place. 
A steady, perhaps a quickened pace, in preparations 
3. 425. for defence of our seaport towns and waters; an 
early settlement of the most exposed and vulner- 
able parts of our country ; a militia so organized that its ef- 
fective portions can be called to any portion of the Union, 
or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient time, are 
means which may always be ready, yet never preying upon 
our resources until actually called into use. They will main- 
tain the public interests while a more permanent force is in 
course of preparation. But much will depend upon the 
promptitude with which these means can be brought into 
activity. If war be forced upon us in spite of our long and 
vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and vigorous 
movements in its outset will go far toward securing us in its 
course and issue, and toward throwing its burdens upon 
those who render necessary the resort from reason to force. 

I CONSIDER the people who constitute a society or na- 
tion as the source of all authority in that nation ; as 
free to transact their common concerns by any agents 
they think proper ; to change these agents individually, or 
the organization of them in form or function whenever they 
please;'- that all the acts done by these agents un- 
der the authority of the nation, are the acts of 
3. 22y. the nation, are obligatory to them and inure to 
their use, and can in no wise be annulled or af- 
fected by any change in the form of government, or of the 
persons administering it, consequently the treaties between 
the United States and France were not treaties between 
the U. S. and Louis Capet, but between the two nations of 
America and France. 



114 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter VIII. 
General Views 

I PROPOSED, therefore, to adopt the Dollar as our unit 
of account and payment, and that its divisions and sub- 
divisions should be in the decimal ratio. This was 
adopted . . . and is the system that now prevails. 
I- 7Z- 

THE qualifications of self-government in society are 
not innate. They are the result of habit and long 
training, and for these they will require time and 
probably much suffering. 

l6. 22. 



I 



T is a happy circumstance in human affairs, that evils 
which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in 
some other. . . . 



I WILLINGLY acquiesce in the institutions of my coun- 
try, perfect or imperfect; and think it a duty to leave 
their modifications to those who are to live under them, 
and are to participate of the good or evil they may produce. 
The present generation has the same right of self-govern- 
ment which the past one has exercised for itself. 
1 6. 29. And those in the full vigor of body and mind are 
more able to judge for themselves than those who 
are sinking under the wane of both. 

I THINK, myself, that we have more machinery of gov- 
ernment than is necessary, too many parasites living on 
the labor of the industrious. I believe it might be much 
simplified to the relief of those who maintain it. 
16. 76. 

115 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THAT I should lay down my charge at a proper period 
is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If 
some termination to the services of the chief mag- 
istrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied by prac- 
tice, his office, nominally for years will, in fact, become for 
life; and history shows how easily that degen- 
i6. 293. erates into an inheritance. 

EXCITED by wrongs to reject a foreign government 
which directed our concerns according to its own 
interests, and not to ours, the principles which jus- 
tified us were obvious to all understandings, they were im- 
printed in the breast of every human being; and Providence 
ever pleases to direct the issue of our contest in 
16. 317. favor of that side where justice was. 

A GOVERNMENT regulating itself by what is wise 
and just for the many, uninfluenced by the local and 
selfish views of the few who direct their affairs, has 
not been seen, perhaps, on earth. Or, if it existed, for a 
moment, at the birth of ours, it would not be easy to fix the 
term of its existence. 
15- 31- 



G 



OVERNMENTS are republican only in proportion 
as they embody the will of the people, and execute 
it. "15- 33- 



I THANK you, Sir, for the copy of the new constitution 
of Spain . . . there is one provision which will im- 
mortalize its inventors. It is that which, after a certain 
epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read and 

116 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

write. This is new, and is the fruitful germ of the im- 
provement of everything good, and the correction 

14. 130. of everything imperfect in the present constitution. 
This will give you an enlightened people, and an 

energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the 

aristocratic spirit of the government. 

WITHDRAWING myself within the shell of our 
own State, I have long contemplated a division 
of it into hundreds or wards, as the most funda- 
mental measure for securing good government, and for in- 
stilling the principles and exercise of self-government into 
every fibre of every member of our common- 
14. 70. wealth. . . . It is for some of you young 
legislators to immortalize yourselves by laying this 
stone as the basis of our political edifice. 

THERE are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim 
a right to further as long as I breathe, the public 
education, and the subdivision of counties mto 
wards. I consider the continuance of republican government 
as absolutely hanging on these tvv-o hooks. 
14. 84. 

I SEE our safety in the extent of our confederacy, and in 
the probability that in the proportion of that the sound 
parts v/ill always be sufficient to crush local poisons. 
14. 120. 



T 



HE fondest wish of my heart ever was, that the sur- 
plus portion of these taxes, destined for the payment 
of that debt, should when that object was accom- 



IT' 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

plished, be continued by annual or biennial enactments, and 
applied in time of peace, to the improvement of our country 

by canals, roads and useful institutions, literary 
13. 354. or others; and in time of war to the maintenance 

of the war. For authority to apply the surplus to 
objects of improvement an amendment to the Constitution 
would have been necessary. 



IT is a comfort that the medal has two sides. I do not 
myself contemplate human nature in quite so sombre a 
view. That there is much vice and misery in the world, 
I know ; but more virtue and happiness I believe, at least in 
our part of it; the latter being the lot of those employed in 

agriculture in a greater degree than other callings. 
12. 379. That we are overdone with banking institutions, 

which have banished the precious metals, and sub- 
stituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these 
have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and em- 
ployments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world 
have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of 
exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and 
that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society, 
who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to 
the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered, and all our 
present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be de- 
plored than remedied. 



I RECEIVED ... an offer of Mr. McDonald of an 
iron mine to the public, and I thank you for taking the 
trouble of making the communication, as it might have 
its utility. But having always observed that public works 

118 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

are much less advantageously managed than the same are by 
private hands, I have thought it better for the 

12. 107. public to go to market for whatever it wants which 
is to be found there ; for their competition brings 

it down to the minimum of value. 

I have no doubt that we could buy brass cannon at market 

cheaper than we could make iron ones. 

IN the construction of a law, even in judiciary cases of 
meum and teum, where the opposite parties have a right 
and counter right in the very words of the law, the 
judge considers the intention of the law giver as his true 
guide, and gives to all the parts and expressions of the law 
that meaning which will effect instead of defeat- 
II. 318. ing its intention. But in laws merely executive, 
where no private right stands in the way, and the 
public object is the interest of all, a much freer scope of con- 
struction, in favor of the intention of the law, ought to be 
taken, and ingenuity ever should be exercised in devising 
constructions which may save to the public the benefit of the 
law. Its intention is the important thing; the means of ac- 
quiring it quite subordinate. . . . It is further to be con- 
sidered that the constitution gives the executive a general 
power to carry the laws into execution. 

PERHAPS it will be found that to obtain a just repub- 
lic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort 
to government at all) it must be so extensive as that 
local egoisms may never reach its greater part ; that on every 
particular question, a majority may be found in its councils 
free from particular interests, and giving there- 
9. 299. fore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of 
justice . . . it is unfortunate, that the efforts 
of mankind to recover the freedom of which they have been 



119 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

so long deprived, will be accompanied with violence, with 
errors, and even with crimes. But while we weep over the 
means, we must pray for the ends. 



T 



HE little spice of ambition which I had in my younger 
days has long since evaporated, and I set still less 
store by a posthumous than present name. 
303- 



TREASON. This when real, merits the highest pun- 
ishment. But most codes extend their definitions of 
treason to acts not really against ones country. Tliey 
do not distinguish between acts against Government and acts 
against the oppressions of government ; the latter are virtues ; 
yet they have furnished more victims to the execu- 
8. 332. tioner than the former; because real treasons are 
rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful 
strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of 
treason laws in all countries. Reformation of government 
with our neighbors, being as much wanted now as reforma- 
tion of religion is, or ever was anywhere, we should not 
wish them to give up to the executioner the patriot who fails, 
and flees to us. Treasons, then, taking the simulated with 
the real, are sufficiently punished by exile. 

SUCH is the hospitality ... in America . . . and their 
disposition to assist strangers, that he may boldly go 
to any house he sees, and make the inquiry he needs. 
He will be sure to be received kindly, honestly informed, and 
accommodated in a hospitable way, without any other intro- 
duction than an information who he is and what 
7. 49. are his views. It is not the policy of the govern- 
ment in that country to give any aid to works of 
any kind. They let things take their natural course without 
help or impediment, which is generally the best policy. 



120 



\y 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

HAPPY for us that abuses have not yet become patri- 
monies, and that every description of interest is in 
favor of national and moderate government. That 
we are yet able to send our wise and good men together to 
talk over our form of government, discuss its weakness and 
establish its remedies with the same sang froid as 
7. 72. they would a subject of agriculture. The example 
we have given to the world is single, that of chang- 
ing our form of government under the authority of reason 
only, without bloodshed. 



I 



T is rendering mutual service to men of virtue and under- 
standing to make them acquainted with one another. : 
6. 424. 



THERE are minds which can \^t pleased by honors and 
preferments; but I see nothing in them but envy and 
enmity. It is only necessary to possess them, to know 
how little they contribute to happiness, or rather how hostile 
they are to it. No attachments soothe the mind so much as 
those contracted in early life. ... I had 
6. 427. rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with 
my books, my family, and a few old friends, din- 
ing on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, 
than to occupy the most splendid post which any human 
power can give. . . , 

HAPPILY for us, that when we find our constitutions 
defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of 
our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of 
philosophers, and set it to rights, while every other nation 
on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore 
their Constitutions. 
6. 295. 

121 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



T 



HE moment a person forms a theory, his imagina- 
tion sees in every object only the traits which favor 
that theory. 6. 312. 



I RELY on the good sense of the people for remedy, 
whereas the evils of monarchical governments are be- 
yond remedy. If any of our countrymen wish for a 
king, give them Aesop's fable of the frogs who asked a 
King; if this does not cure them, send them to Europe. They 
will go back republicans. 
6. 225. 

I KNOW no condition happier than that of a Virginia 
farmer might be, conducting himself as he did during 
the war. His estate supplies a good table, clothes him- 
self and his family with their ordinary wearing apparel, fur- 
nishes a small surplus to buy salt, sugar, coifee, and a little 
finery for his wife and daughters, enables him to 
6. 229. receive and visit his friends, and furnishes him 
pleasing and healthy occupation. To secure all 
this, he needs but one act of self-denial to put off buying 
anything until he has the money to pay for it. 

BUT, say they, the people have acquiesced, and this 
has given it an authority superior to the laws. It is 
true that the people did not rebel against it and was 
that a time for the people to rise in rebellion ? should a pru- 
dent acquiescence at a critical time be construed into a con- 
firmation of every illegal thing done during that 
2. 170. period? . . . but to what dangerous lengths 
will this argument lead ? Did the acquiescence of 
the colonies under the various acts of power exercised by 
Great Britain in our infant State, confirm these acts, and 
so far invest them with the authority of the people as to 



122 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

render them unalterable, and our present resistance wrong? 
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legisla- 
ture must the people rise in rebellion, or their silence be con- 
strued into a surrender of that power to them? . . . 

OUR ancient laws expressly declare that those who are 
but delegates themselves shall not delegate to others 
powers which require judgment and integrity in their 
exercise. 
2. 175- 



123 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Chapter IX. 
The Constitution 



OUR first essay in America, to establish a federative 
government, had fallen on trial very short of its ob- 
ject. During the w^ar of Independence, while the 
pressure of an external enemy hooped us together, and their 
enterprises kept us necessarily alert, the spirit of the people, 
excited by danger, was a supplement to the Con- 
I. ii6. federation, and urged them to zealous exertions, 
whether claimed by that instrument or not; but, 
when peace and safety were restored, and every man be- 
came engaged in useful and profitable occupation, less at- 
tention was paid to the calls of Congress. The fundamental 
defect of the confederation was, that Congress was not au- 
thorized to act immediately on the people, and by its own 
officers. Their power was only requisitory, and these requi- 
sitions were addressed to the different legislatures, to be by 
them carried into execution, without other coercion than the 
moral principle of duty. This allowed in fact a negative to 
every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; 
a negative so frequently exercised in practice as to benumb 
the action of the Federal Government, and to render it in- 
efficient in its general objects, and more especially in pecu- 
niary and foreign concerns. The want, too, of a separation 
of the Legislative, Executive, and judiciary functions work- 
ed disadvantageously in practice. Yet this State of things 
afforded a happy augury of the future march of our confed- 
eracy, when it was seen that the good sense and good dispo- 
sitions of the People, as soon as they perceived the incom- 
petence of their first compact, instead of leaving its correc- 
tion to insurrection and civil war, agreed, with one voice, to 



124 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

elect deputies to a General Convention, who should peaceably 
meet and agree on such a Constitution as "would insure 
peace, justice, liberty, the common defence, and general wel- 
fare." 

The example of four Presidents voluntarily retiring at 
the end of their eighth year, and the progress of public opin- 
ion, that the principle is salutary, have given it in practice 
the force of precedent and usage; insomuch that should a 
president consent to become a candidate for a third election, 
I trust he would be rejected, on this demonstration of am- 
bitious views. 



MARCH II, 1798. Baldwin mentions at table the fol- 
lowing fact : when the bank bill was under discus- 
sion in the House of Representatives Judge Wilson 
came in, and was standing by Baldwin. Baldwin reminded 
him of the following fact which passed in the grand con- 
ventions. Among the enumerated powers given 
I. 423. to Congress, was one to erect corporations. It 
was on debate struck out. Several particu- 
lar powers were then proposed. Among others Rob- 
ert Morris proposed to give Congress a power to 
establish a National bank. . . . Whereupon it was 
rejected, as was every other special power, except that 
of giving copyrights to authors, and patents to inventors; 
the general power of incorporating being whittled down to 
this shred. Wilson agreed to the fact. 



OUR new Constitution, of which you speak also, has 
succeeded beyond what I apprehended it would have 
done. I did not at first believe that eleven States out 
of thirteen would have consented to a plan consolidating 



125 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

them as much into one. A change in their dispositions, 
which had taken place since I left them, had ren- 

7. 253. dered this consolidation necessary, that is to say, 

had called for a Federal Government which could 
walk upon its own legs, without leaning for support on the 
State legislatures. A sense of necessity and a submission to 
it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that, whenever the 
people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own 
government ; that whenever things get so far wrong as to at- 
tract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights. 

I SHALL hazard my own ideas to you as hastily as my 
business obliges me. I wish to preserve the line drawn 
by the Federal Constitution between the general and 
particular governments as it stands at present, and to take 
every prudent means of preventing either from stepping 
over it. Though the experiment has not yet had 

8. 276. a long enough course to show us from which 

quarter encroachments are most to be feared, yet 
it is easy to foresee, from the nature of things, that the en- 
croachments of the state governments will tend to an excess 
of liberty which will correct itself, while those of the Gen- 
eral Government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify 
itself from day to day, instead of working its own cure, as 
all experience shows. I would rather be exposed to the in- 
conveniences attending too much liberty, than those attend- 
ing too small a degree of it. . . . Responsibility is a 
tremendous engjine in a free government;. . . . 



IT is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State gov- 
ernments are superior to the Federal, or the Federal to 
the States. The people to whom all authority belongs, 
have divided the powers of government into two distinct 

126 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

departments, the leading characters of which are foreign 
and domestic ; and they have appointed for each a 

15. 328. distinct set of functionaries. These they have 

made co-ordinate, checking and balancing each 
other. ... As independent as separate nations, a spirit 
of forbearance and compromise therefore, and not of en- 
croachment and usurpation, is the healing balm of such a 
Constitution; and each party should prudently shrink from 
all approach to the line of demarcation, instead of rashly 
overleaping it, or throwing grapples ahead to haul to here- 
after. 

THESE cares are however no longer mine. I resign 
myself cheerfully to the managers of the ship, and 
the more contentedly as I am near the end of my 
voyage. I have learned to be less confident in the conclu- 
sions of human reason, and give more credit to contrary opin- 
ions. . . . The radical idea of the character 

16. 23. of the Constitution of our government, which I 

have adopted as a key in cases of doubtful con- 
struction, is, that the whole field of government is divided 
into two departments, domestic and foreign (the States in 
their mutual relations being of the latter) ; that the former 
department is reserved exclusively to the respective States 
within their own limits, and the latter assigned to a separate 
set of functionaries, constituting what may be called the for- 
eign branch, which, instead of a federal basis, is established 
as a separate government quoad hoc, acting as the domestic 
branch does on the citizens directly and coercively; that 
these departments have distinct directories, co-ordinate, and 
equally independent and supreme, each within its own sphere 
of action. Whenever a doubt arises to which of these 
branches a power belongs, I try it by this test. ... If 
we have a doubt, relative to any power, we ought not to 



127 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

exercise it. When we consider the extensive and deep- 
seated opposition to this assumption, the conviction enter- 
tained by so many that this deduction of powers by elaborate 
construction, prostrates the rights reserved to the States; 
the difficuhies with which it will rub along in the course of 
its exercise ; that changes of majorities will be changing the 
system backwards and forwards, so that no undertaking un- 
der it will be safe ; that there is not a State in the Union 
which would not give the power willingly, by way of amend- 
ment, with some little guard, perhaps, against abuse; I can- 
not but think it would be the wisest course to ask an ex- 
press grant of the power. A government held together by 
the bands of reason only requires much compromise of opin- 
ion ; that things even salutary should not be crammed down 
the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may 
be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great 
deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of har- 
mony and fraternity. In such a case it seems to me that it 
would be safer and wiser to ask an express grant of the 
power. This would render its exercise smooth and accept- 
able to all, and insure to it all the facilities which the States 
could contribute, to prevent that kind of abuse which all 
will fear, because all know it is so much practised in public 
bodies, I mean the bartering of votes. It would reconcile 
every one, if limited by the proviso that the federal propor- 
tion of each State shoul^ be expended within the State. With 
this single security against partiality and corrupt bargaining, 
I suppose there is not a State, perhaps not a man in the 
Union, who would not consent to add this to the powers of 
the General Government. 



O 



UR new constitution. This instrument forms us into 
one State, as to certain objects, and gives us a leg- 
islative and executive body for these objects. It 



128 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

should therefore guard us against their abuses of power, 

within the field submitted to them . . . half a loaf is 

better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our 

7. 309. rights let us secure what we can . . . the 

jealousy of the subordinate governments is a 

precious reliance ... a brace the more will often keep 

up the building, which would have fallen with that one brace 

the less. 

The executive in our governments is not the sole, it is 
scarcely the chief object of my jealousy. The tyranny of 
the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and 
will be for many years. That of the executive will come 
in its turn ; but it will be at a remote period. 

THE several States composing the United States of 
America, are not united on the principle of unlim- 
ited submission to their General Government; but 
that by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution 
for the United States and of amendments thereto, they con- 
stituted a General Government for special pur- 
17. 379. poses — delegating to that government certain 
definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the 
residuary mass of right to their own self government; and 
that whensoever the General Government assumes undele- 
gated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no 
force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, 
and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, 
the other party: that the Government created by this com- 
pact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent 
of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have 
made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measures 
of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact 
among powers having no common judge, each party has an 
equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of 
the mode and measure of redress. 



129 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

The Constitution of the United States, having delegated to 
Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the se- 
curities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and 
felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the 
law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever ; and it be- 
ing true as a general principle, and one of the amendments 
of the Constitution having so declared, "that the powers 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States re- 
spectively, or to the people," therefore . . . the act to 
punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States 
and all other acts which assume to create, define, or punish 
crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution, 
are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to 
create, define, and punish such other crimes, is reserved, 
and of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respec- 
tive states, each within its own territory. . . . Resolved 
(385) That a committee of conference and correspondence 
be appointed, who shall have in charge to communicate the 
preceding resolutions to the legislatures of the several 
States ; to assure them that this commonwealth continues in 
the same esteem of their friendship and Union which it has 
manifested from that moment at which a common danger 
first suggested a common Union : that it considers Union, 
for specified national purposes, and particularly to those 
specified in their late federal compact, to be friendly to the 
peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States : that faith- 
ful to that compact, according to the plain intent and mean- 
ing in which it was understood and acceded to by the several 
parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation : that it 
does also believe that to take from the States all the powers 
of self-government and transfer them to a general and con- 
solidated government, without regard to the special delega- 
tions and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is 



130 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; 
and that therefore this Commonweahh is determined, as it 
doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and 
consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on 
earth : that in case of an abuse of the delegated powers, the 
members of the general government, being chosen by the 
People, a change by the People would be the Constitutional 
remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not 
been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful rem- 
edy : that every State has a natural right in cases not within 
the compact, to nullify of their own authority all assump- 
tions of power by others within their limits: that without 
this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and 
unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judg- 
ment for them : that nevertheless, this commonwealth, from 
motives of regard and respect for its co-states, has wished 
to communicate with them on the subject: that with them 
alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties 
to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last 
resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not 
a party, but merely the Creature of the compact, and subject 
as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those 
by whom, and for whose use itself and its powers were all 
created and modified. Confidence is everywhere the parent 
of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and 
not in confidence: it is jealousy and not confidence which 
prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we 
are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has 
accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our 
confidence may go, let the honest advocate of confidence read 
the alien and sedition acts, and say if the Constitution has 
not been wise in fixing limits to the Government it created, 
and whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. 
. . . In questions of power, let no more be heard of 



131 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by 
the chains of the Constitution. . . . This Commonwealth 
does therefore call on its co-States for expression of their 
sentiments , . , and it doubts not . . . that the co-States, 
recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, 
will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, 
and will each take measures of its own for providing that 
neither these acts, nor any others of the General Govern- 
ment not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Consti- 
tution, shall be exercised within their respective territories. 

PROTEST of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Whilst 
the General Assembly thus declares the rights retained 
by the States, rights which they have never yielded, 
and which this State will never voluntarily yield, they do 
not mean to raise the banner of disaffection, or of separation 
from their Sister States, co-parties with theni- 
17. 445. selves to this compact. They know and value too 
highly the blessings of their Union as to foreign 
nations and questions arising among themselves to consider 
every infraction as to be met by actual resistance. They re- 
spect too affectionately the opinions of those pos- 
sessing the same rights under the same instrument, 
to make every difference of construction a ground 
of immediate rupture. They would, indeed, consider 
such a rupture as among the greatest calamities which 
could befall them ; but not the greatest. There is one 
greater, submission to a government of unlimited powers. 
It is only when the hope of avoiding this shall become abso- 
lutely desperate, that further forbearance could not be in- 
dulged. Should a majority of the co-parties, therefore, con- 
trary to the expectation and hope of this assembly, prefer, 
at this time, acquiescence in these assumptions of power by 
the federal member of the government, we will be patient 



132 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and suffer much, under the confidence that time, ere it be too 
late, will prove to them also the bitter consequences in which 
that usurpation will involve us all. In the meanwhile, we 
will breast with them, rather than separate from them, every 
misfortune, save that only, of living under a government of 
unlimited powers. 

We owe every other sacrifice to ourselves, to our federal 
brethren, and to the world at large, to pursue with temper 
and perseverance the great experiment which shall prove 
that man is capable of living in society, governing itself by 
laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoy- 
ment of life, liberty, property, and peace; and further to 
show, that even when the government of its choice shall 
manifest a tendency to degeneracy, we are not at once to 
despair, but that the will and the watchfulness of its sounder 
parts will reform its aberrations, recall it to original and 
legitimate principles, and restrain it within the rightful limits 
of self-government. . . . Supposing then that it might 
be for the good of the whole, as some of its co-states seem 
to think, that the power of making roads and canals should 
be added to those directly given to the federal branch, as 
more likely to be systematically and beneficially directed, 
than by the independent action of the several States, this 
commonwealth, from respect to these opinions, and a desire 
of conciliation with its co-states, will consent, in concur- 
rence with them, to make this addition, provided it be done 
regularly by an amendment of the compact, in the way estab- 
lished by that instrument, and provided also, it be sufficiently 
guarded against abuses, compromises, and corrupt practices, 
not only of possible, but of probable occurrence. 

THE State is invaded, militia to be called out, an army 
marched, arms and provisions to be issued from the 
public magazines, the legislature to be convened, and 
the council is divided. Can it be believed to have been the 



133 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

intention of tlie framers of the Constitution that the Con- 
stitution itself and their constituents with it 
13. 128. should be destroyed for want of a will to direct the 
resources they had provided for its preservation? 
Before such possible consequences all verbal scruples must 
vanish ; construction must be made secundum arbitrium boni 
veri, and the Constitution be rendered a practicable thing. 
The exposition of it must be vicious, which would leave the 
Nation under the most dangerous emergencies without a di- 
recting will. The cautious maxims of the Bench to seek 
the will of the legislator and his words only, are proper and 
safer for judicial government. They act ever on an indi- 
vidual case only, the evil of which is partial, and gives time 
for correction. But an instant of delay in executive pro- 
ceedings may be fatal to the whole nation. They must not 
therefore be laced up in the rules of the judiciary depart- 
ment. They must seek the intention of the legislator in all 
the circumstances which may indicate it in the history of 
the day ... in reason and practice. 

WOULD Congress grant a charter of incorporation 
and a sum for premiums annually? It has al- 
ways been denied by the Republican party in this 
country that the Constitution had given the power of incor- 
poration to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of 
the United States this was the great ground on 
12. 231. which that establishment was combated and 
the party prevailing supported it only on the 
ground of its being an incident to the power given them for 
raising money. On this ground it has been acquiesced in, 
and will probably be again acquiesced in as subsequently con- 
firmed by public opinion. But in no instance have they ever 
exercised this power of incorporation out of this district, 
of which they are the only legislature. 



134 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

It is still more settled that among the purposes to which the 
Constitution permits them to apply money, the granting pre- 
miums or bounties is not enumerated, and there has never 
been a single instance of their doing it, although there has 
been a multiplicity of applications. The Constitution has left 
these encouragements to the several States. I have in two 
or three messages recommended to Congress an amendment 
to the Constitution, which should extend their power to these 
objects. But nothing is yet done. 

SOME men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious 
reverence, and deem them like the ark of the cove- 
nant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the 
men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and 
suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew 
that age well ; I belonged to it and labored with it. 
15. 40. It deserved well of its country. It was very Hke 
the present, but lacked the experience of the pres- 
ent ; and forty years of experience in government is worth a 
century of book reading; and this they would say them- 
selves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not 
an advocate of frequent and untried changes in laws and 
Constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be 
borne with; because when once known, we accommodate 
ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting 
their evil effects. But I know also that laws and institutions 
must go hand and hand with the progress of the human 
mind. . . . We might as well require a man to wear the 
coat that fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain 
ever under the regime of their ancestors. It is this prepos- 
terous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their 
monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change 
of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to 
progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrench- 



135 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ed themselves behind steady habits, and obhged their sub- 
jects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous 
innovations, which had they been referred to the peaceful 
deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have 
been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow 
no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is 
not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of 
ordering its own affairs. . . . Each generation is as in- 
dependent of the one preceding as that was of all that had 
gone before. It has, like them, the right to choose for itself 
the form of government it believes most promotive of its 
own happiness ; consequently to accommodate to the circum- 
stances in which it finds itself, that received from its pre- 
decessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind 
that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or 
twenty years should be provided by the Constitution, so that 
it may be handed on with periodical repairs, from genera- 
tion, to the end of time, if anything human can so long 
endure. . . . 



136 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter X. 
The Judiciary 

THERE was another amendment, of which none of 
us thought at the time, and in the omission of which, 
hu-ks the germ that is to destroy this happy com- 
bination of National powers in the General government, 
for matters of National concern, and independent pow- 
ers in the States for what concerns the States sev- 
I. 120. erally. . . . Our Judges are effectually independent 
of the Nation. But this ought not to be. I would 
not indeed make them dependent upon the Executive author- 
ity; as they formerly were in England; but I deem it indis- 
pensable to the continuance of this government that they 
should be submitted to some practical and impartial control ; 
and that this, to be imparted must be compounded of a mix- 
ture of State and Federal authorities. 

It is not enough that honest men are appointed Judges. 
All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and 
how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence. 
To this bias add Esprit de Corps of their peculiar maxim 
and creed, that "it is the office of a good Judge to enlarge 
his jurisdiction," and the absence of responsibility; and how 
can we expect impartial decision between the General Gov- 
ernment, of which they are themselves so eminent a part, 
and an individual state, from which they have nothing to 
hope or fear? We have seen too that contrary to all cor- 
rect example, they are in the habit of going out of the ques- 
tion before them, to throw an anchor ahead, and grapple 
further hold for future advances of power. They are then, 
in fact, the corps of sappers and miners, steadily working to 
undermine the independent rights of the states, and to con- 
solidate all power in the hands of that government in which 



137 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

they have so important a freehold estate. But it is not by 
the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their 
distribution, that good government is effected. Were not 
this great country already divided into States, that division 
must be made, that each might do for itself directly, and 
what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every 
State again is divided into Counties, each to take care of 
what lies within its particular bounds ; each County again 
into Townships or Wards, to manage minuter details ; and 
every ward into farms to be governed each by its individual 
proprietor. Were we directed from Washington when to 
sow and when to reap we should soon want bread. It is by 
this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general 
to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best 
managed for the good and prosperity of all. I repeat that 
I do not charge the Judges with wilful and ill-intentioned 
error ; but honest error must be arrested, where its tolera- 
tion leads to public ruin . . . judges should be with- 
drawn from the Bench, whose erroneous biases are leading 
us to dissolution. It may, indeed, injure them in fame and 
fortune; but it saves the Republic, which is the first and 
supreme law. 

THE dignity and stability of government in all its 
branches, the morals of the people, and every bless- 
ing of society depend so much upon an upright and 
skilful administration of justice, that the judicial power 
ought to be distinct from both the legislature and executive, 
and independent from both, that so it may be a 
2. 4. check upon both, as both should be checks upon 
that. The judges, therefore, should always be 
men of learning and experience in the laws of exemplary 
morals, great patience, calmness and attention ; their minds 
should not be distracted with jarring interests ; they should 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

not be dependent upon any man or body of men. To these 
ends they should hold estates for life in their offices, or, in 
other words, their commissions should be during good be- 
havior, and their salaries ascertained and established by law. 

IT has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk 
from its expression . . . that the germ of dissolu- 
tion of our federal government is in the Constitution of 
our Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeach- 
ment is scarcely a scare crow), working like gravity by night 
and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to- 
15. 331. morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a 
thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall 
be usurped from the States, and the government of all be 
consolidated into one. To this I am opposed ; because, when 
all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great 
things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all 
power, it will render powerless the checks of one govern- 
ment on another, and will become as venal and oppressive 
as the government from which we separated. It will be as 
in Europe, where every man must be either pike or gudgeon, 
hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs are wares 
from the same workshop; made of the same materials, and 
by the same hand. 

IF ever this vast country is brought under a single gov- 
ernment, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, 
indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so 
wide a surface. This will not be borne, and you will have 
to choose between reformation and revolution. If I know 
the spirit of this country, the one or the other is in- 
15. 389. evitable. Before the. canker becomes too inveter- 
ate, before its venom has reached so much of the 
body politic as to get beyond control, remedy should be ap- 

1.39 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

plied. Let the future appointment of Judges be for four or 
six years, and renewable by the President and Senate. This 
will bring their conduct at regular periods, under revision 
and probation, and may keep them in equipoise between the 
general and special governments. We have erred in this 
point by copying England, where certainly it is a good thing 
to have the judges independent of the king. But we have 
omitted to copy their caution also, which makes a judge 
removable on the address of both Legislative Houses. That 
there should be public functionaries independent of the na- 
tion ... is a solecism in a republic of the first order 
of absurdity and inconsistency. 

TAXES on consumption like those on capital or in- 
come, to be just, must be uniform. I do not mean 
to say that it may not be for the general interest to 
foster for awhile certain infant manufactures, until they are 
strong enough to stand against foreign rivals, but when evi- 
dent that they will never be so, it is against right 
15. 432. to make the other branches of industry support 
them. 



140 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter XI. 

Foreign Relations 

IF there be one principle more deeply rooted than any- 
other in the mind of every American, it is that we 
should have nothing to do with conquest. . . . An 
exchange of surplusses and wants between neighbor nations 
is not only a right but a duty, under the moral law, and 
measures against right should be mollified in their 

8. 219. exercise, if it be wished to lengthen them to the 

greatest term possible. Circumstances sometimes 
require that rights the most unquestionable should be ad- 
vanced with delicacy. . 

I WOULD rather be in dependence upon Great Britain, 
properly limited than on any nation on earth, or than 
on no nation. But, I am one of those, too, rather than 
submit to the rights of legislating for us, assumed by the 
British parliament, and which late experience has shown 
they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my Ifand 
4. 28. to sink the whole island in the ocean. (Written 
in 1775.) 

WE certainly cannot deny to other nations that 
principle whereon our government is founded, 
that every nation has a right to govern itself in- 
ternally under what form it pleases, and to change these 
forms at will ; and externally to transact business with other 
nations through whatever organ it chooses, 

9. 7. whether that be king, convention, assembly, com- 

mittee. President, or whatever it be. The only 
thing essential is, the will of the nation. Taking this as your 
polar star you can hardly err. 



141 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE (lay is not distant when we may formally require 
a meridian of partition through the ocean which 
separates the two hemispheres, on the hither side of 
which no European gun shall ever be heard, nor an American 
on the other. 

15- 2^3- 



E 



STABLISH the eternal truth that acquiescence un- 
der insult is not the way to escape war. 
9- 308. 



THAT the persons of our citizens shall be safe in free- 
ly traversing the ocean, that the transportation of 
our own produce, in our own vessels, to the mar- 
kets of our choice, and the return to us of the articles we 
want for our own use, shall be unmolested, I hold to be 
fundamental, and the gauntlet that must be for- 
14. 301. ever hurled at him who questions it. 

FOR my part I wish that all nations may recover and 
retain their Independence ; that those which are over- 
grown may not advance beyond safe measures of 
power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained 
among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friend- 
ship may be sought and cultivated by all. It is 
14. 308. our business to manufacture for ourselves 
whatever we can, to keep our markets open for 
what we can spare or want ; and the less we have to do with 
the enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but 
at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, 
which may make the stoutest tremble. But I hope our wis- 
dom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less 
we use our power the greater it will be. 



142 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ALWAYS a friend to peace and believing it to promote 
eminently the happiness and prosperity of mankind, 
I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed as 
long as the rights and interests of the nations can be pre- 
served. But whensoever hostile aggressions on these require 
a resort to war, we must meet our duty and con- 
19. 156. vince the world that we are just friends and 
brave enemies. (Written to Andrew Jackson.) 

YOU have not been mistaken in supposing my views 
and feeling to be in favor of the abolition of war. 
Of my disposition to maintain peace until its condi- 
tion shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself, the 
world has had proofs, and more perhaps than it has ap- 
proved. I hope it is practicable, by improving the 
18. 298. mind and morals of society, to lessen the dispo- 
sition to war ; but of its aboHtion I despair. Still, 
on the axiom that a less degree of evil is preferable to a 
greater, no means should be neglected which may add weight 
to the better scale. 



I HAVE ever deemed it fundamental for the United States 
never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. 
Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. 
Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their com- 
plicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, 
are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal 
15. 436. war. All their energies are expended in the de- 
struction of their labor, property, and lives of 
their people. On our part, never had a people so favorable 
a chance of trying the opposite system, of peace and fra- 
ternity with mankind, and the direction of all our means 
and faculties to the purposes of improvement instead of de- 



143 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

struction. With Europe we have few occasions of collision, 
and these, with a little prudence and forbearance, may be 
generally accommodated. 

OUR difficulties are indeed great . . . but when 
viewed in comparison to those of Europe, they are 
the joys of paradise. , . . Every government but 
one on the continent of Europe, demolished, a conqueror 
roaming over the face of the earth with havoc and destruc- 
tion, a pirate spreading misery and ruin over the 
12. 372. face of the ocean. Indeed, my friend, ours is a 
bed of roses. And the system of government 
which shall keep us afloat amidst the wreck of the world, 
will be immortalized in history. VVe have, to be sure, our 
petty squabbles and heart burnings, and we have something 
of the blue devils at times, as to these raw heads and bloody 
bones that are eating up other nations. But happily for us 
the Mammoth (Napoleon) cannot swim, nor the Leviathan 
(England) move on dry land; and if we will keep out of 
their way, they cannot get at us. 

SHOULD foreign nations, however, deceived by this 
appearance of division and weakness, render it neces- 
sary to vindicate by arms the injuries to our coun- 
try, I believe, with you, that the spirit of revolution is not 
extinguished, and that the cultivators of peace will again, as 
on that occasion, be transformed at once into a 
12. 317. nation of warriors who will leave us nothing to 
fear for the natural and national rights of our 
country. 

I WOULD . . . erect a column on the southernmost 
limit of Cuba, and inscribe on it a ne plus ultra as to us 
in that direction. We should then have only to include 
the North in our confederacy, which would be of course in 



144 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the first war, and we should have such an empire for hberty 
as she has never surveyed since the creation, and 
12. 277. I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so 
well calculated as ours for extensive empire and 
self-government. ... It will be objected to our receiv- 
ing Cuba, that no limit can then be drawn to our future ac- 
quisitions. Cuba can be defended by us without a navy, 
and this develops the principle which ought to limit our 
views. Nothing should ever be accepted which would re- 
quire a navy to defend it. 



I 



V "Y" HAVE but one system of ethics for men and for nations 

— to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under 

all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting 

in the long run even the interests of both; and I am sure 

it promotes their happiness. '. 

8. 17. 



I 



T is impossible that the world should long continue in- 
sensible to so evident a truth as that the right to have 
commerce and intercourse with our neighbors is a nat- 
ural right. To suppress this neighborly intercourse is an 
exercise of force, which we shall have a just right to re- 
8. 29. move, when the superior force. 

NEVER was there a country (France) where the 
practice of governing too much had taken deeper 
root and done more mischief. To say in excuse that 
gratitude is never to enter into the motives of National 
conduct, is to revive a principle which has been buried for 
centuries with its kindred principles of the lawful- 
7. 445. ness of assassination, poison, perjury, etc. All of 
these were legitimate principles in the dark ages 
which intervened between ancient and modern civilization. 



145 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

but exploded and held in just horror in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. I know but one code of morality for men, whether 
acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rogue 
when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest 
man when I act alone, will be believed in the former asser- 
tion, but not in the latter. 



THE politics of Europe render it indispensably neces- 
sary that, with respect to everything external, we be 
one nation only, firmly hooped together. Interior 
government is what each State should keep to itself. H it 
were seen in Europe that all our States could be brought to 

concur in what the Virginia Assembly has done, it 
5. 278. would produce a total revolution in their opinion 

of us, and respect for us. And it should ever be 
held in mind, that insult and war are the result of want of 
respectability in the National character. As long as the 
States exercise, separately, those acts of power which re- 
spect foreign nations, so long will there continue to be 
irregularities committed by some one or other of them, which 
will constantly keep us on an ill footing with foreign nations. 
. . . I am persuaded that a gift of lands by the State of 
Virginia to the Marquis De La Fayette would give a good 
opinion here (Paris) of our character, and would reflect 
honor on the Marquis. Nor am I sure that the day will not 
come when it will be an useful asylum to him. The time of 
life at which he visited America was too well adapted to 
receive good and lasting impressions to permit him ever to 
accommodate himself to the principles of monarchical gov- 
ernment; and it will need all his own prudence, and that of 
his friends, to make this country a safe residence for him. 
How glorious, how comfortable in reflection it will be to 
have prepared a refuge for him in case of reverse. 

146 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

44'\ TT XHETHER it would be useful to us to carry all 

\/\/ our own productions or none?" Were we 

perfectly free to decide this question, I should 

reason as follows : We have now lands enough to employ an 

infinite number of people in their cultivation. Cultivators of 

the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are 
5. 93. the most vigorous, the most independent, the most 

virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and 
wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds. 
As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, 
I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or any- 
thing else. But our citizens will find employment in this line 
till their numbers, and of course their productions, become 
too great for the demand, both internal and foreign. This 
is not the case as yet, and probably will not be for a consid- 
erable time. As soon as it is, the surplus of hands must be 
turned to something else. I should then, perhaps, wish to 
turn them to the sea in preference to manufactures ; because 
comparing the characters of the two classes, I find the for- 
mer the most valuable citizens. I consider the class of arti- 
ficers as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which 
the liberties of a country are generally overturned. How- 
ever, we are not free to decide this question on principles of 
theory only. Our people are decided in the opinion that it 
is necessary for us to take a share in the occupation of the 
ocean, and their established habits induce them to require 
that the sea be kept open to them, and that that line of 
policy be pursued, which will render the use of that element 
to them as great as possible. I think it a duty in those en- 
trusted with the administration of their affairs to conform 
themselves to the decided choice of their constituents ; and 
that, therefore, we should in every instance preserve an 
equality of right to them in the transportation of commo- 
dities, in the right of fishing, and in the other uses of the 



147 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

sea. But what will be the consequence? Frequent wars 
without a doubt. Their property will be violated on the sea, 
and in foreign parts, their persons will be insulted, im- 
prisoned, etc., for pretended debts, contracts, crimes, contra- 
band, etc., etc. These insults must be resented, even if we 
had no feelings, yet to prevent their eternal repetition; or, 
in other words, our commerce on the ocean and in other 
countries, must be paid for by frequent war. The justest 
dispositions possible in ourselves will not secure us against 
it. It would be necessary that all other nations be just also. 
Justice, indeed, on our part, will save us from those wars 
which would have been produced by a contra.ry disposition. 
But how can we prevent those caused by the wrongs of other 
nations ? By putting ourselves in a position to punish them. 
Weakness provokes insult ^nd injury, while a condition to 
punish often prevents them. This reasoning leads to the 
necessity of a naval force ; that being the only weapon by 
which we can reach an enemy. 



148 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter XII. 
The Tariff 

I REJOICE, as a moralist, at the prospect of a reduction 
of the duties on wine by our national legislature. It is 
an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax 
on the rich. It is a prohibition of its use to the middling 
class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to the poi- 
sons of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. 
15. 179. Xo nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and 
none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes 
ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth, the 
only antidote to the bane of whiskey. 

MY idea is that we should encourage home manufac- 
tures to the extent of our own consumption of 
everything of which we raise the raw material. 
12. 236. 

IHA"\'E lately inculcated the encouragement of manufac- 
tures to the extent of our own consumption at least in 
all articles of which we raise the raw material. The 
Federals say the iron which we make must not be wrought 
into ploughs, axes, hoes, etc., in order that the ship owners 
may have the profit of carrying it to Europe, and 
12. 22/. bringing it back in a manufactured form. . . . 
yet this absurd hue and cry has done much to 
federalize X*ew England, their doctrine goes to the sacrificing 
agriculture and manufacture to commerce; to the calling of 
our people from the interior countr}- to the seashore to turn 
merchants, and to convert this great agricultural country into 
a cit}- of Amsterdam. But I trust the good sense of this 



149 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

country will see that its greatest prosperity depends on a due 
balance between agriculture, manufactures and commerce, 
and not in this protuberant navigation which has kept us in 
hot water from the commencement of our government, and 
is now engaging us in war. That this may be avoided with- 
out the surrender of right is my sincere prayer. 

YOU tell me I am quoted by those who wish to con- 
tinue our dependence on England for manufactures. 
There was a time when I might have been so quoted 
with more candor, but within the thirty years which have 
since elapsed how circumstances have changed! We were 
then in peace. Our independent place among na- 
14. 389. tions was acknowledged. A commerce which of- 
fered the raw material in exchange for the same 
material after receiving the last touch of industry, was 
worthy of welcome to all nations. It was expected that those 
especially to whom manufacturing industry was important 
would cherish the friendship of their customers by every 
favor, by every inducement, and particularly cultivate their 
peace by every act of justice and friendship. Under this 
prospect the question seemed legitimate, whether with such 
an immensity of land unimproved, courting the hand of hus- 
bandry, the industry of agriculture or manufactures would 
add most to the national wealth? And the doubt was en- 
tertained on this consideration chiefly, that to the labor of 
the husbandman a vast addition is made by the spontaneous 
energies of the earth on which it is employed : for one grain 
of wheat committed to the earth she renders twenty, thirty, 
and even fifty fold, whereas to the labor o^ the manufacturer 
nothing is added. Pounds of flax, in his hands, yield, on the 
contrary, but pennyweights of lace. This exchange, too, 
laborious as it may seem, what a field did it promise for the 
occupations of the ocean; what a nursery for the class of 



150 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

citizens who were to exercise and maintain our equal rights 
on that element! . . . but who in 1785 could foresee 
the rapid depravity which was to render the close of that 
century the disgrace of the history of man . . . we were 
completely excluded from the ocean ... we have ex- 
perienced . . . that to be independent for the comforts 
of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now 
place the manufacturer by the side of the argriculturist. 
. . . the former question assumes a new form : shall we 
make our own comforts or go without them, at the will of a 
foreign nation? . . . Experience has taught me that 
manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as 
our comfort; and if those who quote me as of a different 
opinion, will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing for- 
eign, where an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, 
without regard to difference of price, it will not be our 
fault if we do not soon have a supply at home equal to our 
demand. 

SHALL we suppress the impost and give that advan- 
tage to foreign over domestic manufactures? On a 
few articles of more general and necessary use the 
suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the 
great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign 
luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich 
3. 423. enough to afford themselves the use of them. 
Their patriotism would certainly prefer its con- 
tinuance and application to the great purposes of the public 
education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of 
public improvement, as it may be thought proper to add to 
the constitutional enumeration of federal powers. By these 
operations new channels of communication will be opened 
between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, 
their interests will be identified, and their Union cemented 



151 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

by indissoluble ties. ... I suppose an amendment to 
the Constitution necessary, by consent of the States, because 
the objects now recommended are not among those enu- 
merated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the 
public moneys to be applied. 



AGRICULTURE, manufactures, commerce, and navi- 
gation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the 
most thriving when left most free to individual en- 
terprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, 
may sometimes be interposed, 

3- 337- 



THE revenue on the consumption of foreign articles 
is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add 
foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being col- 
lected on our seaboards and frontiers only, and incorporated 
with the transactions of our merchants, it may be the pleas- 
ure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, 
3. 377. what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax 
gatherer of the United States? These contribu- 
tions enable us to support the current expenses of the gov- 
ernment, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extin- 
guish the native right to the soil within our own limits, to 
extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public 
debts, as places at a short day their final redemption, and that 
redemption once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, 
by a just repartition among the States and a corresponding 
amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of peace 
to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and 
other great objects within each State. 



152 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE following principles, being founded in reciproc- 
it}', appear perfectly just, and to offer no cause of 
complaint to any nation : 
I. Where a nation imposes high duties on our produc- 
tions, or prohibits them altogether, it may be proper for us 
to do the same by theirs ; first burdening or ex- 
3. 278. eluding those productions which they bring here, 
in competition with our own of the same kind, 
selecting next such manufactures as we take from them in 
greatest quantity, and which, at the same time, we could the 
soonest furnish to ourselves, or obtain from other countries ; 
imposing on them duties lighter at first, but heavier and 
heavier afterwards as other channels of supply open. Such 
duties having the effect of indirect encouragement to do- 
mestic manufactures of the same kind, may induce the 
manufacturer to come himself into these states, where 
cheaper subsistence, equal laws, and a vent of his wares, 
free of duty, may insure him the highest profits from his 
skill and industry. 

HAVE you considered all the consequences of your 
proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a 
source of boundless patronage to the executive, job- 
bing to members of congress and their friends, and a bot- 
tomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only 
appropriating the surplus of the post office reve- 
9. 324. nues ; but the other revenues will soon be called to 
their aid, and it will be a source of eternal 
scramble among the members, who can get the most money 
wasted in their State ; and they will always get most who 
are meanest. We have thought, hitherto, that the roads of a 
State could not so well be administered even by our State 
legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot. 
How will they be when a member from New Hampshire is 



153 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

to mark out a road for Georgia? Does the power to estab- 
lish post roads, given you by the Constitution, mean that you 
should MAKE the roads, or only select from those already 
made those on which there shall be a post? If the term be 
equivocal (and I really do not think so), which is the safest 
construction ? that which permits a majority of Congress to 
go to cutting down mountains and bridging rivers, or the 
other, which if too restricted may be referred to the States 
for amendment, securing due measures and proportion 
among us, and providing some means of information to the 
members of Congress tantamount to that ocular inspection, 
which, even in our county determinations, the magistrate 
finds cannot be supplied by other evidence? The fortifica- 
tion of harbors was liable to some objection, but national 
circumstances furnished color. In this case there is none. 



154 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter XIII. 
Theories of Government 

THE property of this country (France) is absolutely 
concentrated in a few hands, having revenues of 
from half a million guineas a year downward. These 
employ the tiower of the country as servants, some of them 
having as many as 200 domestics, not laboring. They em- 
ploy also a great number of manufacturers and 
19. 17. tradesmen, and lastly the class of laboring hus- 
bandman. But after all there comes the most nu- 
merous of all classes, that is the poor who cannot find work. 
I asked myself what could be the reason so many should be 
permitted to beg who are willing to work in a country where 
there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated 
lands ? These lands are disturbed only for the sake of game. 
It would seem then that it must be because of the tremen- 
dous wealth of the proprietors which puts them above atten- 
tion to the increase of their revenues by permitting these 
lands to be labored. I am conscious that an equal division 
of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this 
enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk 
of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for 
subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivi- 
sions go hand in hand with the affections of the human mind. 
The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the 
children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations 
in equal degree, is a politic measure and a practicable one. 
Another means of silently lessening the inequality of prop- 
erty is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and 
to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical pro- 
gression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country 
uncultivated lands and unemployed poor it is clear that the 



T55 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

laws of property have been so far extended as to violate 
natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for 
man to labor and live on. If for the encouragement of in- 
dustry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care 
that other employment be provided to those excluded from 
the appropriation. If we do not, the fundamental right to 
labor the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon 
yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find 
employment, but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at 
liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not 
too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as 
possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small 
landholders are the most precious part of the State. 

THE aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have 
regarded with the commiseration their history in- 
spires. Endowed with the faculties and the rights 
of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and independ- 
ence, and occupying a country, which left them no desire 
but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing 
3. 378. population from other regions directed itself on 
these shores ; without power to divert, or habits to 
contend against, they have been overwhelmed with the cur- 
rent, or driven before it; now reduced within limits too nar- 
row for the hunter's state, humanity enjoins us to teacli 
them agriculture and the domestic arts ; to encourage them to 
that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their 
place in existence, and to prepare them in time for that 
state of society which to bodily comforts adds the improve- 
ment of the mind and the morals. 

ARE there no inconveniences to be thrown into the 
scale against the advantage expected from a multi- 
plication of numbers by the importation of foreign- 
ers? It is for the happiness of those united in society to 

156 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must 
of necessity transact together. Civil government 
2. 120. being the sole object of forming societies, its ad- 
ministration must be conducted by common con- 
sent. Every species of government has its specific principles. 
Ours are perhaps more peculiar than any other in the uni- 
verse. It is a composition of the freest principles of the 
English Constitution, with others derived from natural right 
and reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the 
maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet from such we are to 
expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring 
with them the principles of the governments they leave, im- 
bibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it 
will be in exchange for unbounded licentiousness, passing as 
is usual from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle 
if they were to stop precisely at the point of temperate lib- 
erty. These principles with their language they will transmit 
to their children. In proportion to their numbers they will 
share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their 
spirit, warp and bias its directions. . . . Is it not safer 
to wait with patience 2y years 3 months longer for the at- 
tainment of any degree of population desired or expected? 
May not our government be more homogeneous, more peace- 
able, more durable? 

IT is said that they possess the means of defence, and 
that we do not. How so, are we not men? Yes, but 
our men are so happy at home that they will not hire 
themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can 
have no standing armies for defence, because we have no 
paupers to furnish the materials. The Greeks and 
14. 184. Romans had no standing armies, yet they defend- 
ed themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and 
the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put 

157 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression 
as a standing army. Their system was to make every man 
a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his 
country whenever that was reared. This made them invin- 
cible ; and the same remedy will make us so. 

E\^ERY society has a right to fix the fundamental 
principles of its association, and to say to all indi- 
viduals that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the 
limits of those principles, and involving dangers which the 
society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere 
15. 28. else for their exercise; that we want no psuedo 
citizens on such terms. We may exclude them 
from our territory as we do persons afflicted with disease. 
Such is the situation of our country. We have most abun- 
dant resources of happiness within ourselves, which we may 
enjoy in peace and safety, without permitting a few citizens, 
infected with the mania for rambling and gambling, to bring 
danger on the great mass engaged in innocent and safe pur- 
suits at home. . . . We are to choose (between) : i. 
Licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, 
with eternal war for the many; or, 2. restricted commerce, 
peace and steady occupations for all. . . . No earthly 
consideration could induce my consent to contract such a 
debt as England has by her wars for Commerce, to reduce 
onr citizens by taxes to such wretchedness. . . . And 
all this to feed the avidity of a few milionary merchants, and 
to keep up one thousand ships of war for the protection of 
our commercial speculations. 



THAT our Creator made the earth for the use of the 
living and not of the dead ; that those who exist not 
can have no power over, use, nor right in it, that one 
generation cannot foreclose or burden its use upon another, 

158 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

which comes to its own right and by the same beneficence. 
That a preceding generation cannot bind a suc- 
15. 470. ceeding one by its laws or contracts; these deriv- 
ing their obHgation from the will of the existing 
majority, and that majority being removed by death, an- 
other comes in its place with a will equally free to make its 
own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-ev'dent 
that no explanation can make them plainer ; for he is not to 
be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control 
existence, or that nothing can move something. They are 
axioms also pregnant with salutary consequences. . . . 
The laws of civil society indeed for the encouragement of 
industry, give the property of the parent to his family on his 
death, and in most civilized countries permit him even to 
give it, by testament, to whom he pleases. And it is also 
found more convenient to suffer the laws of our predeces- 
sors to stand on our implied assent, as if positively re- 
enacted, until the existing majority positively repeals them. 
But this does not lessen the right of that majority to repeal 
whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it. 
Habit alone confounds what is civil practice with natural 
right. 



THE three great questions of amendment now before 
you. I mean, ist, the limitation of the term of 
Presidential service; 2nd, the placing of the choice 
of the President effectually in the hands of the people ; 3rd, 
the giving to Congress the power of internal improvement, 
on condition that each State's federal proportion 
16. 14. of the moneys so expended shall be employed 
within that State. The friends of Consolidation 
would rather take these powers by construction than accept 
them by direct investiture from the States. Yet as to inter- 
nal improvement particularly, there is probably not a State 



159 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

in the Union which would not grant the power on the con- 
dition named, or which would grant it without that. . . . 
The real friends of the Constitution in its federal form, if 
they wish it to be immortal, should be attentive, by amend- 
ments, to make it keep pace with the advance of the age, in 
science and experience. Instead of this the European gov- 
ernments have resisted reformation, until the people seeing 
no other resource, undertake it themselves, by force, their 
only weapon, and work it out through blood, desolation and 
long continued anarchy. Here it will be by large fragments 
dropping off and refusing reunion, but on condition of 
amendment, or perhaps permanently. If I can see these 
three great amendments prevail, I shall consider it as a re- 
newed extension of our lease, shall live in more confidence 
and die in more hope. 

HE who receives an idea from me, receives instruction 
himself without lessening mine ; as he who lights 
his taper at mine receives light without darkening 
me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another 
over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, 
and improvement of his condition, seems to have 
13. 334. been peculiarly and benevolently designed by na- 
ture, when she made them, like fire, expansible 
over space, without lessening their density in any point, and 
like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical 
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. 
Inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. 
Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising 
from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas 
which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, 
according to the will and convenience of society, without 
claim or complaint from anybody. . . . Other nations 
have thought that these monopolies produce more embar- 

160 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

rassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed 
that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention are as 
fruitful as England in new and useful devices. 

IT is a wise rule, and should be fundamental in a govern- 
ment disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time 
to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties. 
Never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same 
instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal 
within a given term and to consider the tax as 
13. 269. pledged to the creditors on the public faith. . . . 
But the term of redemption must be moderate, 
and at any rate within the limit of their rightful powers. 
But what limits it will be asked does this prescribe to their 
powers? What is to hinder them from creating a perpetual 
debt? The laws of nature I answer. The earth belongs to 
the living not the dead. The will and the power of a man 
expire with his life, by nature's law. . . . We may con- 
sider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right by 
the will of its majority to bind themselves, but none to bind 
the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of an- 
other country . . . the period of a generation, or the 
term of its life, is determined by the laws of mortality, 
which, varying a little in different climates, offer a general 
average to be found by observation. I turn for instance to 
Buffon's table, of twenty-three thousand nine hundred and 
ninety-four deaths and the ages at which they happened, and 
I find that of the number of all ages living at one moment, 
half will be dead in twenty- four years and eight months. 
But leaving out minors, who have not the power of self-gov- 
ernment, of the adults living at one moment, a majority of 
whom act for the society, one-half will be dead in 18 years 
and 8 months. At nineteen years from the date of a con- 
tract the majority of the contractors are dead, and their con- 

161 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tract with them. . . . Suppose the majority (of the 
State of New York) on the first day of the year 1794 had 
borrowed a sum of money equal to the fee simple value of 
the State, and to have consumed it in eating, drinking, and 
making merry in their day; or if you please in quarreling 
and fighting with their unoffending neighbors. Within 18^ 
years one-half the adult citizens were dead. Till then being 
the majority, they might rightfully levy the interest of their 
debt on themselves and their fellow revellers or champions. 
But at that moment a new majority . . . have come 
into place, in their own right, and not under the rights, the 
conditions, or laws of their predecessors. . . . Are they 
bound to acknowledge the debt ? . . . every one will say 
no . . . that the soil is the gift of God to the living, as 
much as it had been to the deceased generation, and the 
laws of nature impose no obligation upon them to pay the 
debt. 

And although like some other natural rights, this has not 
yet entered into any declaration of rights, it is no less a law, 
and ought to be acted on by honest governments. It is at 
the same time a salutary curb on the spirit of war and in- 
debtment, which since the modern theory of the perpetuation 
of debt has drenched the earth with blood and crushed its 

inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating 

In seeking then for an ultimate term for the redemption of 
our debts, let us rally to this principle, and provide for their 
payment within the term of nineteen years at the farthest. 
. . . The states should be applied to, to transfer the right 
of issuing circulating paper to Congress exclusively . . . 
if possible ... I believe that every State . . . 
would do it . . . in time . . . private fortunes, in 
the present state of our circulation are at the mercy of those 
self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods 
of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us. 

162 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

I CONSIDER the fortunes of our republic as depending, 
in an eminent degree, on the extinguishment of the 
pubHc debt, before we engage in any war ; because that 
done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country 
in peace and defend it in war, without recurring to new taxes 
or loans. But if the debt should once more be 
12. 324. swelled to a formidable size, its entire discharge 
will be despaired of, and we shall be committed 
to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, 
closing with revolution. The discharge of the debt, there- 
fore, is vital to the destinies of our government. 

THE nation will judge both the offender and judges 
for themselves. If a member of the legislature or 
the executive does wrong, the day is never far dis- 
tant when the people will remove him. They will see then 
and amend the error in their constitution, which makes any 
branch (of the government) independent of the 
II. 190. nation. They will see that one of the great co- 
ordinate branches of government, setting itself in 
opposition to the other two, and to the common sense of the 
nation, proclaims immunity to that class of offenders which 
endeavors to overturn the Constitution, and are themselves 
protected in it by the Constitution itself; for impeachment is 
a farce which will not be tried again. 

CERTAINLY an inventor ought to be allowed a right 
to the benefit of his invention for some certain term. 
It is equally certain it ought not to be perpetual ; for 
to embarrass society with monopolies for every utensil ex- 
isting, and in all the details of life, would be more injurious 
to them than had the supposed inventors never ex- 
II. 200. isted; because the natural understanding of its 
members would naturally have suggested the same 
things or others just as good. 

163 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE question, whether one generation of men has a 
right to bind another, seems never to have been start- 
ed either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a 
question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, 
but place among the fundamental principles of government. 
, . . that no such obligation can be transmitted, I 
7. 454. think very capable of proof; I start out on this 
ground which I suppose to be self-evident, that the 
earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have 
neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by 
an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and 
reverts to the society, the child, the legatee or creditor, takes 
it, not by natural right, but by a law of the society of which 
he is a member. . . . What is true of every member of society 
is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole 
can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals 
. . . the conclusion then, is that neither the representatives of 
the nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly 
engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time, 
that is to say within thirty-four years of the date of the en- 
gagement. . . . On a similar ground it may be proved 
that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a 
perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living gen- 
eration: they may manage it then, and what proceeds from 
it as they please during their usufruct. 

They are masters, too, of their own persons, and con- 
sequently they may govern them as they please. But per- 
sons and property make the sum of the objects of govern- 
ment. The Constitution and the laws of their predecessors 
are extinguished then, in their natural course, with those 
w'ho gave them being. This could preserve this being till it 
ceased to be itself and no longer. Every Constitution then, 
and every law, naturally expires at the end of thirty-four 
years. 

164 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

If it be enforced longer it is an act of force and not of 
right. It may be said that the succeeding generation exercis- 
ing, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as 
if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 
thirty-four years only. In the first place this objection ad- 
mits the right in proposing an equivalent. It might be, in- 
deed, if every form of government were so perfectly con- 
trived that the will of the majority could always be obtained 
fairly, and without impediment. But this is true of no form. 
The people cannot assemble themselves ; their representation 
is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every 
legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the pub- 
lic councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead 
them astray from the general interests of their constituents ; 
and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical 
man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable 
than one which needs repeal. 

THE error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the 
operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the 
body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But 
our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, 
only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience 
we never submitted, we could not submit. We are 
I. 221. answerable for them to our God. The legitimate 
powers of government extend to such acts only 
as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for 
my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It 
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said 
his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject 
it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him 
worse, by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make a 
truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will 
not cure them. 



165 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents 
against error. They are the natural enemies of error, and 
of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted 
free inquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. 
Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the Ref- 
ormation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been 
purged away. . . . Reason and experiment have been 
indulged and error has fled before them. It is error alone 
that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by 
itself. 



i66 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter XIV. 
Dangers to the Republic 

ONE hundred and seventy despots would surely be as 
oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their 
eyes upon the Republic of Venice. As little will it 
avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An Elective 
Despotism was not the government we fought for, but one 
which should not only be founded on free prin- 
2. 163. ciples, but one in which the powers of government 
should be so divided and balanced among several 
bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their 
legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained 
by the others. . . . The legislature have accordingly in 
many instances decided rights which should have been left 
to judiciary controversy; and the direction of the Executive 
. . . is becoming habitual and familiar. And this is done 
with no ill intention. The views of the present members are 
perfectly upright. When they are led out of their regular 
province, it is through art in others and inadvertence by 
themselves. And this will probably be the case for some time 
to come. But it will not be a very long time, mankind soon 
learn to make interested uses of every right and power which 
they possess or may assume. . . . With money we will 
get men, said Csesar, and with men we will get money. Nor 
should our assembly be deluded by the integrity of their pur- 
poses, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never 
be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse 
them. They should look forward to the time, and that not a 
distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from 
which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of 
the government, and be spread by them through the body of 
the people ; when they will purchase the votes of the people 

167 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on 
every side of the Atlantic, and will alike be influenced by 
the same causes. The time to guard against corruption 
and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. 
It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold than to trus: 
to drawing his teeth and claws after he shall have entered. 

IT can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing 
every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers 
are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion 
of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be 
necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. 
They will be forgotten therefore, and their rights 
2. 225. disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in 
the sole faculty of making money, and will never 
think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The 
shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the 
conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made 
heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a 
convulsion. 



THIS is a sample of the effects we may expect from 
the late mischievous law vacating every four years 
nearly all the executive offices of the government. 
. . . It saps the Constitutional and salutary functions of 
the President, and introduces a principle of intrigue and cor- 
ruption, which will soon leaven the mass, not only of senators 
but of citizens. It is more baneful than the at- 
15. 294. tempt which failed in the beginning of the govern- 
ment, to make all officers irremovable but with the 
consent of the Senate. ... It will keep in constant ex- 
citement all the hungry cormorants for office, render them, as 
well as those in place, sycophants to their Senators, engage 

168 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

these in eternal intrigue to turn out one and put in another, 
in cabals to swap work ; and make of them what all Execu- 
tive directories become, mere sinks of corruption and faction. 

EVERYTHING predicted by the enemies of banks, in 
the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be 
ruined now by a deluge of bank paper, as we were 
formerly by the old Continental paper. It is cruel that such 
revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of 
avaricious adventurers, who instead of employing 
14. 16. their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, 
commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an 
instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with 
their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no vise- 
ful industry of theirs. Prudent men must be on their guard 
in this game of Robin's alive, and take care that the spark 
does not extinguish in their hands. I am an enemy to all 
banks discounting bills or notes for anything but coin. But 
our whole country is so fascinated by this Jack o' lantern 
wealth, that they will not stop short of its total and fatal 
explosion. (This took place four years later.) 

THE scheme is for Congress to incorporate a bank 
. . . the subscribers may be one, two, or three or 
more individuals . . . (many single individuals 
being able to pay in the five millions), whereupon this bank 
oligarchy or monarchy enters the field with ninety millions 
of dollars, to direct and control the politics of the 
13. 405. nation; and of the influence of these institutions 
on our politics, and into what scale it will be 
thrown we have had abundant experience. Indeed England 
herself may be the real subscriber. . . . The truth is 
that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated 

169 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by 
legerdemain tricks with paper. . . . 

. . . The overbearing clamor of merchants, specula- 
tors and projectors, will drive us before them with our eyes 
open, until, as in France, under the Mississippi Bubble, our 
citizens will be overtaken with the crush of this baseless 
fabric, without other satisfaction than that of execrations on 
the heads of those functionaries who, from ignorance, pusil- 
lanimity or corruption, have betrayed the fruits of their in- 
dustry into the hands of projectors and swindlers. . . . 
We are already at ten or twenty times the due quantity of 
medium; insomuch that no man knows what his property is 
now worth, because it is bloating while he is calculating ; and 
still less what it will be worth when the medium shall be re- 
lieved from its present dropsical state; and that it is a pal- 
pable fasehood to say that we can have specie for our paper 
whenever demanded. . . . To the existence of banks of 
discount for cash, as on the continent of Europe, there can 
be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, 
and they are a convenience both to merchants and indi- 
viduals. 



170 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Chapter XV. 

Republican Principles. 

I DO not think it for the interest of the General Govern- 
ment itself, and still less of the Union at large, that the 
State Governments should be so little respected as they 
have been. However, I dare say that in time all these 
as well as their central government, like the planets revolving 
around their common sun, acting and acted upon 
10. I. according to their respective weights and dis- 
tances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on 
which our constitution is founded, and which I believe, it 
will exhibit to the world in a degree of perfection, unex- 
ampled but in the planetary system itself. 

WHAT more is necessary to make us a happy and 
prosperous people ? Still one thing more, fellow 
citizens — a wise and frugal government, which 
shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall 
leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of 
industry and improvement, and shall not take from 
3. 320. the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This 
is the sum of good government, and this is neces- 
sary to close the circle of our felicities. 

. . . About to enter, fellow citizens, on the exercise of 
duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to 
you, it is proper that you should understand what I deem 
the essential principles of our government, and consequently 
those which ought to shape its administration . . . equal 
and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or per- 
suasion, religious or political ; peace, commerce, and honest 
friendship, with all nations, entangling alliances with none; 
the support of the State governments in all their rights, as 



171 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

the most competent administrations for our domestic con- 
cerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican ten- 
dencies ; the preservation of the general government in its 
whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace 
at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of 
election by the people — a mild and safe corrective of abuses 
which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peace- 
able remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the 
decisions of the majority — the vital principle of republics, 
from Mi^hich there is no appeal but to force, the vital prin- 
ciple and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined 
militia — our best reliance in peace and for the first moments 
of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the 
civil over the military authority; economy in the public ex- 
pense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest pay- 
ment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public 
faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce, its 
handmaid ; the diffusion of information and the arraignment 
of all abuses at the bar of public reason; freedom of re- 
Hgion ; freedom of the press ; freedom of person under the 
protection of the habeas corpus and trial by juries impar- 
tially selected — these principles form the bright constellation 
which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an 
age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages 
and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their at- 
tainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, 
the text of civil instruction — the touchstone by which to try 
the services of those we trust ; and should we wander from 
them in moments of alarm or error, let us hasten to retrace 
our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, 
liberty, and safety. 



172 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

IF the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dan- 
gerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of 
equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better 
as this enforces a law of nature. 
14. 466. 

YOU love them (the people) as infants whom you are 
afraid to trust without nurses ; and I as adults whom 
I freely leave to self-government. ... I be- 
lieve with you that morality, compassion, generosity are in- 
nate elements of the human constitution ; . . . that jus- 
tice is the fundamental law of society; that the 

14. 489. majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a 

crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the 
law of the strongest, breaks up the foundations of society; 
that action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their 
reach and competence, and in all others by representatives, 
chosen immediately, and removable by themselves, consti- 
tutes the essence of a republic . . . and that a govern- 
ment by representation is capable of extension over a greater 
surface of country than one of any other form. 

THE fact is that at the formation of our government 
many had formed their opinions on European writ- 
ings and practices, believing the experiences of old 
countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be 
a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe 
were that men in numerous associations cannot be 

15. 440. restrained within the limits of order and justice, 

but by forces, physical and moral, wielded over 
them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their 
organization of kings, hereditary nobles and priests. Still 
further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem 
it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and 



173 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of 
their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to 
obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and mis- 
erable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their 
privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the 
eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble adoration 
and submission, as to an order of superior beings. Although 
few among us had gone all these lengths of opinion, yet 
many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And 
in the convention which formed our government, they in- 
tended to draw the cords of power as tight as they could 
obtain them, to lessen the dependence of the general function- 
aries on their constituents, to subject to them those of the 
States, and to weaken their means of maintaining the steady 
equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed 
salutary for both branches, general and local. To recover, 
therefore, in practice the powers which the nation had re- 
fused, and to warp to their own uses those actually given, 
was the steady object of the Federal party. Ours, on the 
contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority of the 
convention and of the people themselves. We believed, with 
them, that man is a rational animal, endowed by nature with 
rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could 
be restrained from wrong, and protected in right, by moder- 
ate powers, confided to persons of their own choice, and held 
to their duties by dependence upon their own will. We be- 
lieved that the complicated organization of kings, nobles and 
priests was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of 
associated man ; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary ; 
that the trappings of such a machinery, consumed by their 
expense, those earnings of industry, they were meant to pro- 
tect, and by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to 
sufferance. We believed that men enjoying in ease and se- 
curity the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all 



174 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to 
think for themselves, and to follow their reason as a guide, 
would be more easily and safely governed than with minds 
nourished in error and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, 
by ignorance, indigence and oppression. The cherishment of 
the people then was our principle, the fear and distrust of 
them that of the other party. Composed as we were of the 
landed and laboring classes of the country, we could not be 
less anxious for a government of law and order than were 
the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds of federalism. 
. . . I have stated above that the original objects of 
the Federalists were, ist, to warp our government more to 
the form and principles of monarchy, and, 2d, to weaken the 
barriers of the State governments as co-ordinate powers. In 
the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal 
spirit of the nation that they have abandoned the enterprise, 
shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to 
themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo 
republican mask, are now aiming at their second object, and, 
strengthened by unsuspecting recruits from our ranks, are 
fast approaching an ascendency. . . . Laws are made 
for men of ordinary understandings, and should therefore be 
construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their 
meaning is not to be sought for in subtleties, which may 
make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure. 
. . . I ask for no straining of words against the general 
government, nor against the States. I believe the States can 
best govern our home concerns, and the general government 
our foreign ones. . . . You and I may differ in details 
of minor consequence, as no two minds, more than two faces, 
are the same in every feature. But our general objects are 
the same, to preserve the Republican form and principles of 
our Constitution. . . . 



175 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

NO, my friend, the way to have good and safe govern- 
ment is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it 
among the many, distributing to every one exactly 
the functions he is competent to. Let the national govern- 
ment be entrusted with the defence of the Nation, and its 
foreign and federal relations; the state govern- 
14. 421. ments with the civil rights, laws, police, and ad- 
ministration of what concerns the State generally ; 
the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each 
ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and 
subdividing these republics from the great National one 
down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the ad- 
ministration of every man's farm for himself; by placing 
under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all 
will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and 
the rights of man in every government which has ever ex- 
isted under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all 
cares into one body, no matter whether the autocrats of Rus- 
sia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. 
And I do believe that if the Almighty has not decreed that 
man shall never be free (and it is a blasphemy to believe it) 
that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the 
depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is 
competent to them, and delegating only what is necessary 
. . . to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so 
as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trus- 
tees become more and more oligarchical. . . . Where 
every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward republic, 
or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a partici- 
pant in the government of affairs, not merely at an election 
one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be 
a man in the State who will not be a member of some one of 
its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out 
of his body sooner than let his power be wrested from him 
by a Csesar or a Bonaparte. 

176 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Chapter XVI. 
The Press 

NO government ought to be without censors; and 
where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtu- 
ous it need not fear the fair operation of attack and 
defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting 
out the truth, either in religion, law or politics. I think it 
is as honorable to the government neither to know 
8. 406. nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would 
be undignified and criminal to pamper the former 
and persecute the latter. . . . 

I HAVE preserved through life a resolution, set in a very 
early part of it, never to write in a public paper without 
subscribing my name, and to engage openly an adversary 
who does not let himself be seen, is staking all against noth- 
ing. 
8. 411. 

HISTORY, in general, only informs us what bad gov- 
ernment is. To your request of my opinion of the 
manner a newspaper should be conducted so as to be 
most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts 
and sound principles only." Yet I fear, such a paper would 
find few subscribers. . . . It is a melancholy 
II. 223. truth that a suppression of the press could not 
more completely deprive the nation of its benefits 
than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. 
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. 
Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that pol- 
luted vehicle. The real extent of this misinformation is 
known only to those who are in situations to confront facts 



177 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look 
with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citi- 
zens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that 
they have known something of what has been passing on in 
the world in their time ; whereas the accounts they have read 
in newspapers are just as trvie a history of any other period 
of the world as of the present, except that the real names of 
the day are afifixed to their fables. General facts may indeed 
be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, 
that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has 
subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, etc., etc., but 
no details can be relied upon. I will add that the man who 
never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he 
who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is 
nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods 
and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great 
facts, and the details are all false. . . . Perhaps an 
editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this : 
Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the first. 
Truths ; 2d, Probabilities ; 3d, Possibilities ; 4, Lies. The 
first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little 
more than authentic papers and information from such 
sources as the editor would be willing to risk his reputation 
for their truth. The second would contain what from a ma- 
ture consideration of all circumstances his judgment should 
conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather 
contain too little than too much. The third and fourth 
should be professedly for those readers who would rather 
have lies for their money than the blank paper they would 
occupy. Such an editor would have to set his face against 
the demoralizing practice of feeding the public mind 
habitually with slander, and the depravity of taste which 
this nauseous ailment induces. Defamation is becoming 
a necessity of life ; insomuch that a dish of tea in 



178 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

tlie morning or evening cannot be digested without this 
stimulant. 

THE only security for all is in a free press. The 
force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when per- 
mitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it pro- 
duces must be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the 
waters pure. 
15. 491. 

DURING this administration, and in order to disturb 
it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against 
us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could 
devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important 
to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch 

as they tend to lessen its usefulness, and to sap 
3. 380. its safety; . . . nor was it uninteresting to the 

world that an experiment should be fairly and 
fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by pow- 
er, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of 
truth — whether a government, conducting itself in the true 
spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no 
act which it would be unwilling the whole world should wit- 
ness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation 
, . . he who has time renders a service to morals and 
public tranquility, in reforming these abuses by the salutary 
coercions of the law ; but the experiment is noted, to prove 
that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground 
against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, 
confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public 
judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions, on a 
full hearing of all parties ; and no other definite line can be 
drawn between the inestimable liberties of the press and 
its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprie- 



179 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must 
be sought in the censorship of public opinion. 



AS to myself, conscious that there was not a truth on 
earth which I feared should be known, I have lent 
myself willingly as the subject of a great experi- 
ment, which was to prove that an administration, conduct- 
ing itself with fairness, with integrity and common under- 
standing, cannot be battered down even by the 
II. 155. falsehoods of a licentious press, and consequently 
still less by the press as restrained within the legal 
and wholesome limits of truth. This experiment was want- 
ing for the world to demonstrate the falsehood of the pre- 
text that freedom of the press is incompatible with orderly 
government. I have never therefore even contradicted the 
thousands of calumnies so industriously propagated against 
myself. But the fact being once established, that the press 
is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to 
others to restore it to its strength by recalling it within the 
pale of truth. Within that it is a noble institution, equally 
the friend of science and of civil liberty. 



THE greatest favor which can be done me is the com- 
munication of the opinions of judicious men, of men 
who do not suffer their judgments to be biased by 
either interests or passions. 
II. 159. 

THE light which has been shed on mankind by the art 
of printing has eminently changed the condition of 
the world. As yet, that light has dawned on the 
middling classes only of the men of Europe. The kings 

180 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and the rabble, of equal ignorance, have not as yet received 
its rays ; but it continues to spread, and while 
15. 465. printing is preserved it can no more recede than 
the sun return on his course. A first attempt to 
recover the right of self-government may fail, so may a 
second, a third. . . . All Europe, Russia excepted, has 
caught the spirit; and all will obtain representative govern- 
ment, more or less perfect. This is now well understood to 
be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably 
think it more prudent to chain and tame than to exter- 
minate. To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must 
yet flow, and years of desolation pass over, yet the object is 
worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. For what 
inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity? 



t8t 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Chapter XVII. 

Miscellaneous Extracts 

DEAR PAGE. — In the most melancholy fit that any 
poor soul ever was, I sit down to write to you. Last 
night, as merry as agreeable company and dancing 
with Belinda in the Apollo could make me, I never could 
have thought the succeeding sun could have seen me as 
wretched as I now am ! I was prepared to say a 
4. 12. great deal: I had dressed up, in my own mind, 
such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving a 
language as I knew how, and expected to have performed 
in a tolerably creditable manner. But, good Lord ! when I 
had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, 
uttered in great disorder and interrupted with pauses of un- 
common length, were the too visible marks of my strange 
confusion. 



JOHN ADAMS . . . said . . . Reason, Justice, 
and Equity never had weight enough on the face of 
the earth, to govern the councils of men. It is interest 
alone which does it, and it is interest alone which can be 
trusted. ... It has been said we are independent in- 
dividuals (referring to the colonies) making a bar- 
I. 49. gain together. The question is not what we are 
now, but what we ought to be when our bargain 
is made. The Confederacy is to make us one individual 
only ; it is to form us like separate pieces of metal, into one 
common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate in- 
dividuality, but become a single individual as to all questions 
submitted to the confederacy. 

182 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

MR. MADISON . . . acquired a habit of self- 
i)Osscssion, which placed at ready command the 
rich resources of his luminous and discriminating 
mind, and of his extensive information, and rendered him 
the first of every assembly afterwards of which he happened 
to be a member. Never wandering from his sub- 
I. 63. ject into vain declamation, but pursuing it closely, 
in language pure, classical and copious, soothing 
always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities and soft- 
ness of expression, he rose to the eminent station which he 
held in the great National convention of 1787; and in that 
of Virginia which followed, he sustained the new Constitu- 
tion in all its parts, bearing off the palm against the logic of 
George Mason, and the fervid declamation of Patrick Henry. 

PEAKING with Dr. Franklin of this singular dispo- 
sition of men to quarrel and divide themselves into 
parties, he gave his sentiments, as usual, by Apo- 
logue. He mentioned the Eddystone Lighthouse in the Brit- 
ish channel, as being built on a rock, in the mid channel, 
totally inaccessible in winter from the boisterous 
I. 81. character of the sea in that season; that, there- 
fore, for the two keepers employed to keep up the 
lights, all provisions for the winter were necessarily carried 
to them in autumn, as they could never be visited again until 
the return of the milder season ; that on the first practicable 
day in the spring a boat put off to them with fresh supplies. 
The boatmen met at the door one of the keepers, and ac- 
costed him with a "How goes it, friend?" "Very well." 
"How is your companion?'' "I do not know." "Don't 
know? Is he not here?" "I can't tell." "Have you not 
seen him to-day ?" "No." "When did you see him?" "Not 
since last fall." "You have killed him?" "Not I, indeed.'' 
They were about to lay hold of him as having certainly mur- 

183 




MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

dered his companion ; but he desired them to go upstairs and 
examine for themselves. They went up and there found the 
other keeper. They had quarrelled it seems soon after hav- 
ing been left there, had divided into two parties, assigned 
the cares below to one, and those above to the other, and 
had neither seen, or spoken to one another since. 

ON my return from Holland, I found Paris as I had 
left it, still in high fermentation. . . . Nor should 
we wonder at this pressure, when we consider the 
monstrous abuses of power under which this people were 
ground to powder; when we pass in review the weight of 
their taxes and the inequality of their distribu- 
I. 127. tion; the oppressions of the tithes, . . . the 
shackles on Commerce by Monopolies ; on indus- 
try by Guilds and Corporations ; on the freedom of con- 
science, of thought and of speech ; . . . the venality of 
the judges and their partialities to the rich ; the monopoly of 
the military honors by the Noblesse ; the enormous expenses 
of the Queen, the Princes and the Court ; the prodigalities of 
Pensions ; and the riches, luxury, indolence, and immorality 
of the Clergy. Surely under such a mass of misrule and 
oppression, a people might justly press for a thorough re- 
formation, and might even dismount their rough shorl nders, 
and leave them to walk on their own legs. 

THE appeal to the rights of man, which had been 
made in the United States, was taken up by France, 
first of the European Nations. From her the spirit 
has spread over those of the South. The tyrants of the 
North have allied indeed against it, but it is irresistible. 
Their opposition will only multiply its millions of 
6. 158. human victims; their own satellites will catch it, 
and the condition of man through the civilized 



184 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

world, will be finally and greatly ameliorated. This is a 
wonderful instance of great events from small causes. So 
inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences 
in this world, that a twopenny duty on tea, unjustly imposed 
in a sequestered part of it changes the condition of all its 
inhabitants. 



AND here, I cannot leave this great and good country, 
without expressing my sense of its preeminence of 
character among the Nations of the Earth. A more 
benevolent people I have never known, nor greater warmth 
and devotedness in their select friendships. Their kindness 
and accommodation to strangers is unparalleled, 
I. 159. and the hospitality of Paris is beyond anything I 
had conceived to be practicable in a large City. 
Their eminence, too, in science, the communicative disposi- 
tions of their scientific men, the politeness of general man- 
ners, the ease and vivacity of their conversation, give a 
charm to their society, to be found nowhere else. In a com- 
parison of this with other countries we have the proof of pri- 
macy, which was given to Themistocles, after the battle of 
Salamis. Every General voted himself the first reward of 
valor, and the second to Themistocles. So, ask the travelled 
inhabitant of any nation, in what country on earth you would 
rather live ? — Certainly in my own, where are all my friends, 
my relations and the earliest and sweetest afifections of my 
life. Which would be your second choice? France. 



I EXPLAINED to him (Washington) that . . . as to 
himself, his presence was important; that he was the 
only man in the United States who possessed the con- 
fidence of the whole ; that government was founded on opin- 

185 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

ion and confidence, and that the longer he remained, the 

stronger would become the habits of the people in 

I. 317. submitting to the government, and in thinking it 

a thing to be maintained, that there was no other 

person who would be thought more than the head of a party. 



EDMUND RANDOLPH tells J. Madison and myself 
a curious fact which he had from Lear. When the 
President (Gen. Washington) went to New York, 
he resistcil for three weeks the efforts to introduce levees. 
At length he yielded, and left it to Humphreys and some 
others to settle the forms. Accordingly an ante- 
I. 333. chamber and presence room were provided, and 
when those who were to pay their court were as- 
sembled, the President set out, preceded by Humphreys. 
After passing through the antechamber, the door of the in- 
ner room was thrown open, and Humphreys entered first, 
calling out with a loud voice, "The President of The United 
States." The President was so much disconcerted with it, 
that he did not recover from it the whole time of the Levee, 
and when the company was gone, he said to Humphrey, 
"Well, you have taken me in once, but by God you shall 
never take me in a second time." 



D 



R. BROWN tells me he has it from a merchant, that 
during the last winter the directors of the bank or- 
dered the freest discounts. Every man could obtain 
it. Money being so flush, the six per cents were run up to 
21 and 22 shillings. Then the directors sold out their pri- 
vate stocks. When the discounted notes were be- 
I. 348. coming due, they stopped discounts, and not a dol- 
lar was to be had. This reduced six per cents to 
18 shillinsjs : then the same directors bought in again. 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE passage of the Potomac through the Bkie Ridge 
is, perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in 
nature. You stand on a very high point of land. 
On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged 
along the foot of the mountain an hundred miles to seek a 
vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, in 
2. 24. quest of a passage also. In the moment of their 
junction, they rush together against the mountain, 
rend it asunder, and pass ofif to the sea. The first glance of 
this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that the Earth 
has been created in time, that the mountains were formed 
first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this 
place particularly, they have been dammed up by the Blue 
Ridge Mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the 
whole valley; that continuing to rise they have at length 
broken over at this point and have torn the mountain down 
from its summit to its base. . . . The piles of rock on 
each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident 
marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by 
the most powerful forces of nature, corroborate the impres- 
sion. But the distant finishing which nature has given to 
the picture, is of a very different character. It is a true 
contrast to the foreground. It is as placid and delightful 
as that is wild and tremendous. For the Mountain being 
cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, 
a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance 
in the plain country, inviting you as it were, from the tu- 
mult roaring around to pass through the breach and par- 
ticipate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimatel}' com- 
poses itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to 
lead. . . . This scene is worth a vo3'age across the At- 
lantic. 



187 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

THE Indians' only controls are their manners, and that 
moral sense, of right and wrong, which, like the sense 
of tasting and feeling in every man, makes a part of 
his nature. An offence against these is punished by con- 
tempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is seri- 
ous, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it 
2. 128. concerns. Imperfect as this species of coercion 
may seem, crimes are very rare among them; in- 
somuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as 
among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among 
the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, 
one who has seen both conditions of existence would pro- 
nounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of 
themselves, than under the care of wolves. It will be said 
that great societies cannot exist without government. The 
savages therefore break them into small ones. 

SPIRITUOUS liquors, the small pox, war, and an 
abridgment of territory to a people who lived prin- 
cipally on the spontaneous productions of nature, had 
committed terrible havoc among them, which generation, un- 
der the obstacles opposed to it among them, was not likely 
to make good. That the lands of this country 
2. 131. were taken from them by conquest, is not so gen- 
eral a truth as is supposed. 

I AM much pleased with the people of this country 
(France). The roughness of the human mind is so 
thoroughly rubbed off with them that it seems as if one 
might glide thrugh a whole life with them without a jostle. 
Perhaps, too, their manners may be the best calculated for 
happiness to a people in their situation, but I am 
5. 80. convinced they fall far short of effecting a happi- 
ness so temperate, so uniform, and so lasting as is 
generally enjoyed with us. The domestic bonds here are 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

absolutely done away with, and where can there compensa- 
tion be found? Perhaps they may catch some moments of 
transport above the level of the ordinary tranquil joy we 
experience, but they are separated by long intervals, during 
which all the passions are at sea without rudder or compass. 
. . Indeed it is difficult to conceive how so good a peo- 
ple, with so good a King, so well disposed rulers in general, 
so genial a climate, so fertile a soil, should be rendered so 
ineffectual for producing human happiness by one single 
curse — that of a bad form of government. But it is a fact, 
in spite of the mildness of their governors, the people are 
ground to powder by the vices of the form of government. 
Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am 
convinced there are nineteen millions more wretched, more 
accursed in every circumstance of human existence than the 
most conspicuously wretched individual in the United States. 

AARON BURR . . . found at once that the at- 
tachment of the western country to the present 
Union was not to be shaken ; that its dissolution 
could not be effected with the consent of its inhabitants, and 
that his resources were inadequate, as yet, to effect it by 
force. 
3- 431- 

THE following dialogue took place between my head 
and my heart : Heart — You confess your follies, 
indeed ! but still you hug and cherish them ; and 
no reformation can be hoped where there is no repentance. 
. . . Heart. — Who, then, can so softly bind up the 
wound of another, as he who has felt the same wound 
himself? Head. — The most effectual means of being se- 
cure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to 
suffice for our own happiness. Those which depend 

189 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

on ourselves are the only pleasures a wise man will 
count on ; for nothing is ours, which another man will count 
on ; for nothing is ours of which another may deprive us of. 
Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures. Ever 
in our power, always leading us to something new, never 
cloying, we ride serene and sublime above the concern of 
this mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter 
and motion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that 
Eternal Being who made and bound them by those laws. Let 
this be our employ. Leave the bustle and tumult of society 
to those who have talents to occupy themselves with them. 
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the fol- 
lies and misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries 
is sufficient : why enter, then, as volunteers into those of an- 
other? Is there so little gaul poured into our own cup, that 
we must need help drink that of our neighbor? A friend 
dies, or leaves us; we feel as if a limb was cut off. He is 
sick; we must watch over him, and participate of his pains. 
His fortmie is shipwrecked ; ours must be laid under contri- 
bution. He loses a child, a parent, or a partner : we must 
mourn the loss as if it were our own. Heart. — And what 
more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom 
the hand of heaven hath smitten ! to watch over the bed of 
sickness, and to beguile its tedious and its painful moments! 
to share our bread with one wdiom misfortune has left none ! 
this v/orld aboun^Is indeed v>dth misery; to lighten its burden, 
we must divide it with one another. But let us now try vir- 
tue by your mathematical balance, and as you have put into 
one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put its comforts 
in the other. When languishing then under disease, how 
grateful is the solace of our friends . . . how much are 
we supported by their encouragements and kind offices ! 
When heaven has taken from us some object of our love, 
how svv'cct is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our 



190 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

heads, and into which we may pour the torrent of our tears ! 
Grief, with such a comfort, is ahnost a luxury. . . . 
Assuredly nobody will care for him who cares for nobody. 
But Friendship is precious not only in the shade, but in the 
sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of 
things, the greater part of life is sunshine. 

Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek 
unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell ! . . . They 
mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. . . . 
When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us 
over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of 
science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be 
squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced ; when the arch 
of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance, is to be 
investigated, take up the problem ; it is yours ; Nature has 
given me no cognizance over it. In like manner in denying 
to you the feeling of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, 
of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from 
their control. To these she has adapted the mechanism of 
the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of 
man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. 
She laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, and not in 
science. . . . When the poor woman came to ask a 
charity in Philadelphia you whispered that she looked like 
a drunkard, and that half a dollar was enough to give her for 
the alehouse. Those who want the dispositions to give, easily 
find reasons why they ought not to give. ... If our 
country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of a bayonet, 
had been governed by its head instead of its heart, where 
should we have been now ? Hanging on the gallows as high 
as Haman's. You began to calculate, and to compare wealth 
and numbers; we threw up a few pulsations of our blood; 
we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers, we put 
our existence to the hazard, when the hazard seemed against 



191 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

us, and we saved our country, justifying at the same time 
the ways of providence, whose precept is, to do always what 
is right, and leave the issue to Him. In short, my friend, 
so far as my recollection serves me, I do not know that I 
ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one 
without it. . . . You say I contract them (friendships) 
at random. ... I receive none into my esteem, till I 
know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office, are no 
recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary, very 
good qualities are necessary to make amends for their hav- 
ing wealth, title, and office. 
5- 431- 

MEN come into business at first, with visionary prin- 
ciples. It is practice alone, which can correct and 
conform them to the actual current of affairs. 
7- 39- 

BE assiduous in learning, take much exercise for your 
health and practice much virtue. Health, learning 
and virtue will insure your happiness. They will give 
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honor. Be- 
yond these we want nothing but physical necessaries, and 
they are easily obtained. 
7- 44- 

THE future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi 
States will be our sons. We think we see their hap- 
piness in their Union, and we wish it. Events may 
prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separa- 
tion, why should we take sides with our Atlantic rather than 
our Mississippi descendants? It is the elder and 
10. 408. younger son differing. God bless them both, and 
keep them in Union, if it be for their good, but 



192 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

separate them if it be better. . . . This treaty must of 
course be laid before both houses, because both have im- 
portant functions to perform respecting it. They, I presume, 
will see their duty to their country in ratifying and paying 
for it, so as to secure a good which would never again be in 
their power. But I suppose they must then appeal to the 
Nation for an additional article to the Constitution, approv- 
ing and confirming an act which the nation had not pre- 
viously authorized. The Constitution has made no provi- 
sion for our holding foreign territory, still less for incor- 
porating foreign nations into our Union. The executive, in 
seizing the fleeting occurrence which so much advances the 
good of their country, has done an act beyond the Constitu- 
tion. The legislature . . . risking themselves like faith- 
ful sevants, must ratify and pay for it (Louisiana Territory) 
and throw themselves on their country for doing for them 
unauthorized, what we know they would have done for 
themselves had they been in a situation to do it. It is the 
case of a guardian, investing the money of his ward in the 
purchase of an important adjacent territory, and saying to 
him when of age, I did this for your good ; I pretend to no 
right to bind you : you may disavow me, and I must get out 
of the scrape as I can : I thought it my duty to risk myself 
for you. But we shall not be disavowed by the Nation, and 
their act of indemnity will confirm and not weaken the Con- 
stitution, by more strongly marking out its lines. 

IWTLL not say that public life is the line for making a 
fortune. But it furnishes a decent and honorable sup- 
port, and places ones children on good grounds for pub- 
lic favor. The family of a beloved father will stand with the 
public on the most favorable ground of competition. Had 
General Washington left children, what would 
II. 424. have been denied to them? Perhaps I ought to 
apologize for the frankness of this communication. 



193 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

It proceeds from an ardent zeal to see this government (the 
idol of my soul) continue in good hands. 

HOWEVER I have from the beginning determined to 
submit myself as the subject upon whom may be 
proved the impotency of a free press in a country 
like ours, against those who conduct themselves honestly and 
enter into no intrigue. I admit at the same time that re- 
straining the press to truth, as the present laws 
12. 159. do, is the only way of making it useful. But I 
have thought it necessary first to prove it can 
never be dangerous. 

IT is well known that on every question, the lawyers are 
about equally divided, as is seen in the present case, and 
were we to act but in cases where no contrary opinion 
of a lawyer can be had, we should never act. 
12. 168. 

MY long and intimate knowledge of my countrymen, 
satisfied and satisfies me, that, let there ever be oc- 
casion to display the banners of the law, and the 
world will see how few and pitiful are those who shall array 
themselves in opposition. 
12. 184. 

HISTORY, I believe, furnished no example of a priest- 
ridden people maintaining a free civil government. 
. . . In fifty years more the United States will 
contain 50 million inhabitants, and fifty years are soon gone 
over. 
14. 21. 

ON the whole, his (Washington's) character was, in its 
mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indiffer- 
ent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature 
and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, 

194 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 

and to place him in the same constellation with whatever 
worthies have merited from man an everlasting 
14. 50. remembrance. For his was the singular destiny 
and merit, of leading the armies of his country 
successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of 
its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth 
of a government, new in its forms and its principles, until it 
had settled down into a quiet and orderly train ; and of 
scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his ca- 
reer, civil and military, of which the history of the World 
furnishes no other example. 

MERCHANTS have no country. The mere spot on 
which they stand does not constitute so strong an 
attachment as that from which they draw their 
gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has 
been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance wiih the 
despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his 
own. 
14. 119. 

HOW can expedition be expected from a body which 
we have saddled with an hundred lawyers, whose 
trade is talking? 

14. 310. 

AFTER all men of energy and character must have 
enemies ; because there are two sides to every ques- 
tion, and taking one with decision, and acting on it 
with effect, those who take the other will of course be hos- 
tile in proportion as they feel that effect. 

15. 109. 



195 



MASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

THE Confederation of the States, while on the carpet 
before the old congress, was strenuously opposed by 
the smaller States, under apprehensions that they 
would be swallowed up by the larger ones. We were long 
engaged in the discussion; it produced great heat, much ill 
humor, and intemperate declarations from some 
28. 167. members. Dr. Franklin at length brought the de- 
bate to a close with one of his little apologues. He 
observed that "at the time of the Union of England with 
Scotland, the Duke of Argyle was most violently opposed to 
that measure, and among other things predicted that, as the 
whale had swallowed Jonah, so Scotland would be swallow- 
ed by England. However," said the Doctor, "when Lord 
Bute came into the government, he soon brought into its 
administration so many of his countrymen, that it was found 
in event that Jonah swallowed the whale." This little story 
produced a general laugh and restored good humor, and the 
article of difficulty was passed. 



196 



APPRECIATIONS OF 



Thomas Jefferson 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN, 1859 

I REMEMBER being very much amused at seeing two 
partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight with their 
great coats on, which fight, after a long and rather 
harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out 
of his own coat and into that of the other. If the two lead- 
ing parties of this day are really identical with the 
*i.xv. two in the days of Jefferson and Adams they have 
performed the same feat as the two drunken men. 
But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles 
of Jefferson from total overthrow in this Nation. . . 
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms 
of free society, and yet they are denied and evaded, with no 
small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glitter- 
ing generalities." Another bluntly calls them "self-evident 
lies," and others insidiously argue that they apply to "Su- 
perior Races." These expressions, differing in form, are 
identical in object and effect — the supplanting the principles 
of free government, and restoring those of classification, 
caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of 
crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the 
vanguard, the miners and sappers, of returning despotism. 
We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is 
a world of compensation ; and he who would be no slave 
must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS I EPPERSON. 

to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a jus!' 
God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefiferson — to the 
man, who in the concrete pressure of a national struggle for 
independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, 
and sagacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary docu- 
ment an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, 
and so embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days 
it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very har- 
bingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY SENATOR 
GEORGE F. HOAR 

IF WE want a sure proof of Thomas Jefferson's great- 
ness it will be found in the fact that men of every 
variety of political opinion, however far asunder, find 
confirmation of their doctrine in him. Every party in this 
country to-day reckons Jefferson as its patron saint . . . 
The mighty figure of Thomas Jefferson comes down in his- 
tory with the Declaration of Independence in the one hand 
and the title deed of Louisiana in the other. . . . More 
than any other statesman down to his time — more than any 
other statesman that I can think of — save Lincoln alone — 
he had a steadfast and abiding faith in justice, righteousness 
and liberty as the prevailing and abiding forces in the 
conduct of States, and that justice and righteousness were 
sure to prevail where any people bear rule in perfect liberty. 
He accepted this doctrine with an unhesitating confidence. 
He never failed to proclaim it on all occasions. For it he 
was ready to encounter unpopularity, poverty, if need be, 
imprisonment and exile. Upon it, as on a cornerstone, he 
laid the foundation of the republic. . . . Thomas Jeffer- 
son was one of those men who can differ from hemispheres, 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

from generations, from administrations, and from centuries 
with the perfect assurance that on any question of Hberty 
and righteousness, if the opinion of Thomas Jefferson stand 
on one side and the opinion of mankind on the other, the 
world will, in the end, come around to his way of thinking. 
(I- vii.)- 

THOMAS JEFFERSON BY JAMES C. 
CARTER, LL.D. 

THE LEADING feature in the mind and character of 
Thomas Jefferson was a firm and undoubting belief 
in the worth and dignity of human nature, and in 
the capacity of man for self government. It seems to have 
been inborn ; but whether inborn or communicated, it ruled 
his life, it burst from him like the peal of an anthem when 
he came to pen the immortal Declaration of Independ- 
ence. ... (2. vii.). 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY CHARLES W. 
NEEDHAM, LL.D. 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITY 

"INSTITUTIONS" it has been said, "are the lengthening 
I shadows of great men." . . . It is well therefore 
■■■ that at times we go back to the original Declaration — 
the springs from which have flowed the rivers that refresh 
and benefit mankind. . . . Jefferson . . . believed 
profoundly in the education of all the children in the State, 
of rich and poor alike, in the fundamental or elementary 
courses of instruction at public expense. . . . Writing 
to a friend in France, in later life, upon the subject of fit- 



XI 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

ting one's self for public life, and especially for the duties 
of a legislator, he said in substance : Go among the people, 
lounge upon their beds that you may see how hard they are ; 
eat their food that you may be able, if possible, to put some 
meat in their kettle of vegetables. In higher education, then, 
we should use to the greatest extent possible, the method 
of original research. Let the student of engineering learn 
and establish himself in the laboratories and workshops 
where "things are done!" Let the student of history learn 
some things from the men who are making history. . . . 
But this strange man was always looking out for picked men 
to serve the State; not necessarily in public life, but in all 
those higher walks that make the higher civilization. And 
he believed there was material for high and noble service 
among the poor. He would, therefore, have free scholar- 
ships in these colleges for the poor man's son. . . . How 
was the selection to be made? "Select students who shall 
have exhibited at the elementary schools the most pro- 
nounced indication of aptness of judgment and correct dis- 
position" . . . the last thought is Jefferson's reason for 
education — "the preservation of liberty." How these men 
loved liberty ! They knew its value, for they paid the price 
of it. (4. vi.). 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY ANDREW J. 
MONTAGUE 

GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 

THIS is not a controversial occasion. The political 
philosophy of Mr. Jefferson will take care of itself. 
Its power, and majesty, and simplicity find con- 
firmation in Patron's statement that, "If Jefferson was 



xn 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson is 

right." . . . He studied agriculture, forestry, 

5. i. education, art, and science. He could tie an artery 

or set a fractured leg. He was alike at home with 

the music of his violin, and the "music of the spheres." 

. . . He saw the taper of learning which he lighted grow 

in volume, and within its rays he saw, as if penciled with 

letters of a finer light, a motto often quoted and written by 

him, "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you 

free." 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY J.W.ATKINSON 

EX-GOVERNOR OF WEST VIRGINIA 

TRUE statesmanship is the masterful art. Poetry, 
music, painting, sculpture, and architecture 
please, thrill, and inspire, but the great statesman 
and diplomatist and leader in thought and action convinces, 
controls, and compels the admiration of all classes and 
creeds. Logical thought, power of appeal and tact- 
6. i. fulness never fail to command attention and respect. 
It has always been thus, and it will unquestionably so 
remain. Many really able and brilliant men, however, lack 
balance, and the faculty of calculation. They are too often 
swayed by emotions, and their intellectual powers, which 
otherwise might exert a controlling influence, are thus 
weakened, and often result in failure. True greatness in the 
man is gauged by what he accomplished in life, and the im- 
press he left upon his fellow man. It does not consist of 
one act or even of many, but rather their effect upon the 
times in which he lived, and how long they endure after 
the actor is gfone from the thronsf of the living:. . . . 



xui 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

However gifted one may be, he cannot win conspicuous 
laurels in any calling or avocation if he be deficient in tact- 
fulness. The man who best understands human nature, 
knows how to approach people, and possesses the art of 
leading them, is the one who will invariably have the largest 
following and will possess the greatest amount of influence 
over his fellows. . . . The successful leader in legisla- 
tive bodies — he whose name is recorded on the legislative 
journal as the author of the most important measures which 
are enacted into laws — is without exception that member 
who is tactful, thoughtful, industrious, and sincere. It 
makes no difference how great his natural endowments may 
be, if he is wanting in these elements his success will be re- 
stricted to a narrow sphere ; and the greatest of these is 
tactfulness. The world's great tacticians are few. In Amer- 
ica I can mention but three who are deserving of first rank — 
Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, and James G. Blaine — 
these three, and the greatest of these was Jefferson, as he 
seemed to have learned in early life, more than any of his 
compeers, that a little management will often avoid resist- 
ance which a vast force cannot overcome, and that it is 
wisdom to grant graciously what he could not refuse safely, 
and thus conciliate those whom he was otherwise unable to 
control . . . Through his great genius, transient ques- 
tions were often transformed into eternal truth. . . . 
Military chieftains often win immortal renown as the result 
of a single important battle, and often flash like rushlight 
stars across the sky of history. But this is not true of men 
like Jefferson and others of his class. They grow into 
great characters and they build monuments to their mem- 
ories which the tooth of time cannot destroy. There is 
nothing ephemeral or evanescent in the makeup of their 
records. They build not for a day nor a year, but for the 
centuries. 



XIV 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON BY JOSEPHUS 
DANIELS 

EDITOR, NEWS AND OBSERVER, RALEIGH, N. C. 

MR. JEFFERSON, more than any man of his day, ap- 
preciated the mighty power of the printed page. 
Indeed it may be doubted whether any man of any 
age appreciated so truly its capacity to create pubhc senti- 
ment. He more than any of his famous contemporaries un- 
derstood that the man imbibes what he reads more 
1 8, iii. than what he hears . . . Freedom was to him 
a reHgion. He hated anything that hindered man's 
hberty to think, to write, to speak, to do. . . . Why did 
Mr. Jefferson maintain silence when unjustly accused, and 
why did he prevent the prosecution of men who slandered 
him? The answer is found in his own words. He pro- 
foundly believed that, while a free press would often wound 
and temporarily injure, ten thousand times more evil would 
follow censorship or prosecutions than to trust to the innate 
sense of the public to separate the true from the false, and, 
before Emerson put it into an axiom, Jefferson was confi- 
dent of this truth: "A man passes for what he is worth. 
Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate 
of us, and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a 
man knows that he can do anything — that he can do it bet- 
ter than any one else — he has a pledge of the acknowledg- 
ment of that fact by all persons. The world is full of judg- 
ment days, and into every assembly that a man enters, in 
every action that he attempts, he is gauged and stamped." 

"The press is impotent when it abandons itself to 
falsehood." — Jefferson. 

Jefferson was inherently an innovator. No tradition, 
no custom, no practice, no belief, that did not appeal 



XV 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

to his judgment and reason had any sacredness to him. 
. . . Wherever, in any decade in the world's history — 
yesterday, to-day, to-morrow — the pen is subjected to 
censorship, the words and deeds of Jefferson are the bow 
of promise set in the heavens. As the years shall pass, 
"and the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process 
of the suns," and one by one the nations that sit in dark- 
ness come into the glorious light of freedom — freedom of 
conscience, freedom of speech, freedom to think, and write, 
and print — the majestic figure of Jefferson will loom up as 
the inspiring spirit who first breathed into the printing 
press — (theretofore the unresponsive instrument to further 
the decrees of kings and bind the conscience and thoughts 
of men) — the breath of life, and made it responsive, sentient, 
virile, free. In this new life that dates from Jefferson, this 
free press has become the champion of the oppressed, the 
teacher of the young, the guide of the mature, the comfort 
of the aged, and the mightiest power for good that blesses 
and shall forever bless mankind. , . . 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY G. O. FLOWER 

EDITOR OF THE ARENA 

FOR FIVE years Jefferson studied law — studied it 
exhaustively after the manner of a scientific student 
who is not content until he has traced the laws to 
their origin, and has become conversant with the conditions 
obtaining when great rulings were made or precedents estab- 
lished. . . . Rapidly and darkly grew the clouds 
7. iii. that threatened war . . . when a company of as 
rare souls as ever risked life in the defence of a prin- 
ciple assembled in Raleigh tavern. All were members of 



xvi 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

the House of Burgesses ; all were young men ; and Jefferson 
was there, as he was from the first a leading spirit in the 
revolutionary meetings. These daring young statesmen 
framed a resolution with great care, so as not to alarm 
the timid members, but which was destined to bear mo- 
mentous results. It provided for the appointment of a Com- 
mittee of Correspondence and Inquiry for the dissemination 
of intelligence between the colonies. It was a standing 
committee of eleven. . . . Other colonies were urged to 
appoint similar committees. The resolution was promptly 
passed . . . this bold action was followed by the dis- 
solution of the House, but the committee remained at the 
capital and carefully prepared a circular letter, addressed to 
all the colonies, in which the purpose of the committee was 
fully explained and an urgent invitation was put forth to 
each colony immediately to appoint a similar committee, to 
the end that the thirteen dependencies might be kept in 
close touch and promptly informed of every overt act taken. 

Not only did the colonies respond, but ere long al- 
most every county, settlement, and village had its commit- 
tee. Their work was indispensable. At one time they were 
the soul and strength of the rising tide of opposition, the 
hope of liberty, and the bond of union that emboldened men 
and colonies to speak and strike in a way that would not 
have been thought of if there had been no sense of strength 
through organization and concert of counsel. 

If to-day in every State and County there were Stand- 
ing Correspondence Committees of Eleven, like the old col- 
onial patriots, and composed of the brightest and bravest men 
among the conscience element, the corruption of political life 
incident to virtual government by the corporations and the 
exploitation and robbery of the people through privilege 
and monopoly could be quickly checked. Here, as on 



xvn 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

numerous other occasions, the actions of Jefferson and the 
young patriots of the seventies indicate a wise course for 
the apostles of progressive democracy and justice to-day. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY WILLIAM 
JENNINGS BRYAN 

IT HAS been said that it marks an epoch in history when 
God lets loose a thinker in the world. God let loose a 
thinker when Jefferson was born. Carlyle says that 
thought is stronger than artillery parks ; that thought 
moulds the world like soft clay; that it writes and 
8. viii. unwrites laws, makes and unmakes parliaments — 
and that back of every great thought is love; that 
love is the ruling force in the world. I believe it is true. 
I believe that Jefferson's greatness rests more upon his love 
of human kind than upon his intellect — great as was his in- 
tellect, and that he was great because his heart was big 
enough to embrace the world. . . . Jefferson's memory 
needs no marble or bronze to perpetuate it. Erect your 
monument as high as you can, make it of material as endur- 
ing as you may, time will finally destroy it ; the years will 
come and go, and at last that monument will disappear ; but 
there is in the hearts of the people a monument that time can- 
not touch, and this monument growing, as the world grows, 
increasing as civilization increases, is a greater monument 
than the hand of man can rear. And as people measure the 
influence of Jefferson upon the destinies of the human race, 
they will be convinced that the Bible is true when it says 
that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," for he gave 
the largest measure of service that man ever gave to man. 



xvui 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS I EPPERSON. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HON. GEORGE 
GRAHAM VEST 



T 



HOMAS JEFFERSON wrote his own epitaph. . . . 



"Here was buried 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
Author of the 
DECLARATION of AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 

of 
The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, 
and 
Father of the University of Virginia." 

It is a significant epitaph, and worthy of him who 
wrote it. Jefferson had been a member of the Virginia 

House of Burgesses and of the Continental Con- 
12. i. gress. Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, 

Secretary of State, Vice-President and President of 
the United States, but none of these honors or titles are up- 
on the stone which marks his grave. True to his convic- 
tions, shown by every private and public act, the sworn 
enemy of parade, sham, and ostentation, the stern old Demo- 
crat wanted, living or dead, none of the tinsel and trap- 
pings of heraldic pomp and glory. He named for himself 
his passports to immortality — the rights of man, religious 
liberty, and universal education. 



XIX 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HON. 
WILLIAM WIRT, 1826 

THE FINAL debate on the resolution (Declaration 
of Independence) was postponed as we have seen, 
for nearly a month. In the meantime all who are 
conversant with the course of action of all deliberative 
bodies know how much is done by conversation among 
the members. It is not often, indeed, that prose- 
13. xxii. lytes are made on great questions by public de- 
bate. On such questions opinions are far more 
frequently formed in private, and so formed that debate is 
seldom known to change them. Hence the value of out-of- 
door talent of chamber conversation, where objections can- 
didly stated are candidly, calmly, and mildly discussed ; 
where neither pride, nor shame, nor anger takes part in the 
discussion nor stands in the way of a correct conclusion ; 
but where everything being conducted frankly, delicately, 
respectfully, and kindly, the better cause and the better 
reasoner are almost always sure of success. In this kind of 
service, as well as in all that depended on the power of 
composition, Mr. Jefferson was as much a master magician 
as his eloquent friend Adams was in debate. 



XX 



APPRECIATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HON. JOHN B 
STANCHFIELD 

IN HIS public life of upwards of forty years, covering 
the entire range of preferment from the humblest to 
the highest, two things stand out with great promi- 
nence; he never made a speech, he never waged a war 
. . . he left the Presidency at the end of his second 
term with the admiration and affectionate regard of 
14. i. seven millions of people. The free school, the free 
church and our free government are largely owing 
to his untiring zeal and industry. . . . While the bat- 
tle was raging in the House of Burgesses against the right 
of the first born male to inherit, his opponents, under the 
leadership of Pendleton, pleaded that the eldest son might 
at least take a double share: "Not," was Jefferson's re- 
ply, "until he can eat a double allowance of food and do a 
double allowance of work." "My purpose," said Jefferson 
afterwards, "was instead of an aristocracy of wealth to 
make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and talent." 



THOMAS JEFFERSON BY HON. HENRY 
GEORGE 

JEFFERSON is a pole star among political philoso- 
phers because he based his politics on the eternal, 
self-evident, fundamental truths that all men are 
created equal and free and that they are endowed by their 
creator with certain inherent and unalienable rights, 
16. i. among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. 

xxi 



JUS^ 



UmMOSUUMi. 



M ASTER THOUGHTS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 



RESOLUTION— 1809— ADOPTED BY THE 
SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRE- 
SENTATIVES OF VIRGINIA 

SIR: We have to thank you (Thomas Jefferson) for 
the model of an administration conducted on the 
purest principles of Republicanism ; for pomp and 
state laid aside ; patronage discarded ; internal taxes abol- 
ished ; a host of superfluous officers disbanded, the mon- 
archic maxim "that a national debt is a na- 
17. 398 tional blessing" renounced, and more than thirty- 
three millions of our debt discharged ; the na- 
tive right to nearly one hundred millions of acres of our 
national domain extinguished ; and without the guilt or 
calamities of conquest, a vast and fertile region added to 
our country, far more extensive than her original posses- 
sions. . , . You carry with you the richest of all re- 
wards, the recollection of a life well spent in the service of 
your country, and proofs the most decisive, of the love, the 
gratitude, the veneration of your countrymen. 



xxii 



